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Louis Ibah
Flood occasioned by days of heavy downpour and poor drainage infrastructure is disrupting scheduled flight operations into the Akanu Ibiam International Airport (AIIA), Enugu.
Air Peace and Ethiopian Airlines are the two notable carriers operating scheduled flights into the Enugu airport daily. But the airport is home to many other non-scheduled or chartered aircraft servicing the South-East states. Daily Sun learnt that massive flood at the weekend that flowed into the runway, apron and part of the terminal building had forced both scheduled and non-scheduled operators to cancel or delay their flights with the attendant hardship on passengers who are mostly left stranded for hours at the airport. In a video taken by a passenger and circulated in some social media platforms, an Air Peace flight that eventually made it to Enugu from Lagos was seen held down in a pool of rain water minutes after it arrived even as passengers found it hard making their way out of the aircraft.
“The pictures of the flood at the runway paints Enugu airport as really unsafe for flight operations,” said a passenger, Favour Okoro.
Air Peace Chief Operating Officer, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Olajide, told journalists in Lagos on Monday that the carrier had to cancel flights to Enugu due to the flooding of the runway.
Olajide, who apologised to passengers for their ordeal, explained that Air Peace had to give top priority to safety ahead of other commercial considerations in their operations into the Enugu Airport. Aviation analyst, Mr. Layi Fatimilehin, says “the topography of the area affects the drainage systems of entire areas” even as he demanded that the Federal Government take urgent measures to address the challenge.
“I am not surprised with the flooding at Enugu Airport. I was privileged to know this because I did the feasibility study for ILS/DME & CVOR/DME installations respectively for the airport (which are all navigational and instrument landing systems) about 10 years ago. The flooding issue should be addressed with serious commitment from authority concerned,” Fatimilehin added.
