What happened
On February 28, 2014, an incident occurred at the EPSC airport involving the failure of the lighting control system for the threshold (THR) and runway (RWY) 13/31. The air traffic control tower (TWR EPSC) reported that the lighting system was not functioning as intended. Under normal circumstances, the system should be operational, but the specific failure required the manual intervention of the duty electrical technician to activate the lights.
Due to the nature of the malfunction, the time required to activate the lighting was extended to approximately 20 minutes.
The investigation
The investigation, conducted by the airport management, established that the failure was linked to recent modifications in the navigational lighting installation. Specifically, the issue arose following the displacement of the threshold for runway 13.
Findings
- The primary cause of the incident was a change in the structure of the navigational lighting installation resulting from the displacement of the runway threshold.
Safety action
Following the investigation, changes were implemented regarding the installation servicing the runway lighting to prevent a recurrence of such delays.