Power outage at Cape Town Airport blocks all flights for hours

• A “power supply challenge” at Cape Town International on Sunday Airport meant that flights could not land or depart from the airport until Monday morning.
• Airports Company South Africa has not disclosed the cause of the outage, but said that power supply was restored as of 01:00 on Monday.
• The outage knocked out runway lights, fire rescue services and air traffic navigation.

On Sunday evening, Cape Town International Airport announced that a power outage was impacting a number of essential functions for pilots to be able to land safely, and was forced to divert flights coming into the airport to other airports.

It sent out a notice on depart at and from any airport, especially at night.

Luckily Cape Town Airport was able to divert incoming flights in time, and indicated that services were operational again at 01:00 in the morning, at which point 11 aircraft were able to land safely.

The outage also meant that flights were unable to depart for around six hours until power was returned, likely leaving hundreds of passengers stranded at the airport.

However, some users on X were alleging that flights were still being canceled until later in the morning.

“I’m sitting in Johannesburg this morning instead of Cape Town after our plane landed here, disembarked and we were taken to hotel at 3am. We have been provided exactly zero updates on when or how we get to Cape Town,” one user said.

Airports Company South Africa said that despite power and essential navigational services returning as of the early morning, “technicians and specialists are continuing with permanent repairs and restoration of the network. However, we are waiting for a clear window of opportunity to execute the required work.”

According to FlightRadar24, flights are once again able to land and depart from Cape Town International Airport as of press time. The company says flights can now be tracked via its app.

Airports Company South Africa has not publicly disclosed the cause of the power outage. We have reached out for comment.

(Image – Photo by Skyler Smith on Unsplash)