Some flights at the Francisco C. Ada-Saipan International Airport were cancelled or delayed this morning, Jan. 27, after runway shoulder lights malfunctioned early in the morning, Commonwealth Ports Authority executive director Esther S. Ada said.
Ada said the airport’s airfield operations team notified airport management at about 5:14am that Runway 07’s shoulder lights were not functioning, although the runway end lights remained operational.
“It’s just the shoulder ones,” Ada said, adding that airport crews were immediately dispatched and were still working to restore the lighting system as of Wednesday evening.
The outage affected early morning and nighttime operations, prompting airlines to adjust schedules. United Airlines’ 6am flight to Guam was delayed by about 40 minutes until daylight allowed for safe departure. Jeju Air’s afternoon flight landed and departed without issue, while airlines scheduled to arrive early Thursday morning opted to delay operations until daylight hours.
“I believe T’way will come in later in the morning when there is sunlight,” Ada said, adding that she was still awaiting confirmation from Hong Kong Airlines and Air Busan on whether they would delay or cancel flights.
A check with HK Airlines shows that they’ve adjusted their arrival schedule to 4pm with departure now at 5:20pm.
As of Wednesday night, only daytime flights were operating, with early morning arrivals dependent on airline decisions.
“We followed our usual protocol and informed our tenants and the airlines immediately,” Ada said. “We’ve been providing updates as they become available.”
Ada said there was no certainty yet on when full nighttime operations would resume, though CPA crews were attempting to bring a redundant system online to restore the runway lights.
“We have a spare CCR—it’s like the transformer for the runway lights,” she said. “Our priority is to get the runway lights up and running.”
Once lighting is restored, CPA will conduct a full assessment to determine the cause of the outage and take steps to prevent future disruptions, Ada said.
“We are very cognizant of the impact this has on air service, the airlines, hotels, and passengers,” she said. “As soon as the lights are back on, we will inform the public and the airlines.”
For now, the priority is to get the airport lights up and running against to facilitate nighttime flights again.
“What we're trying to do right now is to have a redundant system that we're trying to get online. So that's what we are trying to get on, which is the spare system that we have,” said Ada.
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