5 February 2008
Costa Rican International Airport Shuts Down for 3 Hours
Posted by Thomas under: Travel and Tourism .
Costa Rica’s main international airport the Juan Santamaria International Airport, north of San Jose, was shut down on Sunday for 3 hours due to a fault with the meteorological weather station that prevented many incoming and out going flights.
The weather station is a key part of the airport providing the control tower with accurate and up-to-date weather conditions from which the control tower relays the information to the pilots of the aircrafts coming into land and taking off. According to interntional flight regulations, without this information aircrafts cannot take off or land.
Flights that were scheduled to land at Juan Santamaria were diverted to the Liberia airport in Guanacaste where they waited until further notice. Flights that were preparing to depart were delayed for 3-5 hours upon the re-opening of the airport which included Continental Airlines, American Airlines, Copa Airlines and TACA aircraft. Two of Copa’s flights were forced to cancel.
The fault has happened once before back in November when the new station was installed, though the problem was solved quickly and the airport schedules were not affected. An investigation has now begun into the fault with a view to possibly relocating the antennas.
(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
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