Entebbe airport resumes operation after 20-hour suspension of flights

Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (UCAA), the aviation regulator, last night announced a temporary shutdown of the country’s only international airport in Entebbe.

 “Flights [to and from the airport] are temporarily closed,” Mr Vianney Luggya, the UCCA public relations manager, told this newspaper shortly after midnight.

 The closure followed an early morning incident in which RwandAir flight, RWD 464, careered off the new runway 17/35 into the grass patch.

 About 60 passengers onboard deplaned safely, both the airline and UCAA noted.

 There was travel chaos and stampede among passengers stranded at the airport after the regulator reversed its evening notice to airmen, in aviation parlance called Notam, that it was safe to land and take-off after the incident.

 Sources in the know said UCAA first stopped inbound flights because the tail and the wing of the accident plane were closer to the runway, but after evaluation, it advised pilots to fly in and land with “caution”.

 This prompted a number of carriers to dispatch planes to Uganda, among them Saudi Airlines that sent a commercial jet to pick Muslims making minor pilgrimage, or Umrah, to the holy sites --- Mecca and Medina --- during the ongoing Ramadan.

Passengers of SN Brussels had been checked in when UCAA issued another Notam on halt of operations at Entebbe International Airport, turning away mid-air Fly Dubai, Ethiopian, and Kenyan Airways aircrafts.

 In a corroboration of our reporting, Mr Luggya, in a WhatsApp update sent to this reporter at 12:19am, noted that:

 “Owing to safety precautions, Entebbe International Airport’s runway 17/35, which was earlier on reopened for operations, has been temporarily closed. Arrangements had been put in place for flights to land and take off with precautions, but during the process of [removing] the RwandAir aircraft from the runway strip (grassland), it got stuck closer to the runway, which called for a review of the previous clearance,” he noted.

 Mr Luggya added: “Efforts are ongoing to resolve this as soon as possible. The public will soon be updated of developments in this regard. Inconveniences are highly regretted.”

 This account triggered unanswered questions: For instance, why doesn’t Entebbe airport have equipment to tow away stricken planes, and why does the airport have only one runway for commercial flights? 

 There were differing explanations why the RwandAir plane, which landed from Nairobi at 5:31am, skidded off the runway.

 UCAA cited a rainy and bad weather, a claim some aviation experts dismissed as wanting because weather-induced visibility problems or turbulence would more likely have prevented the touchdown altogether.

 In addition, a Turkish Airlines aircraft lifted off from Entebbe Airport hours earlier in more intense rain and worse environmental conditions than when the stricken plane landed.

 Another highly-placed source, who was briefed about the problem, identified the poor quality of runway 17/35 which the source said, among others, lacks adequate marking to guide pilots, as posing danger to safe operations of aircrafts.

 “The runway has poor markings, surfacing and the design leads to water accumulating on the runway. And overtime as planes land, the tyre particles accumulate on the runway, making it smooth. Combined with the poor surfacing on runway 17/35, it means planes landing at Entebbe airport fail to gain traction when pilots apply the brakes, leading to planes skidding off the runway,” the source said.

 Another individual familiar with the airport operations told this newspaper separately that questions about the quality of the runway was discussed by top UCAA management sometime in February, and proposals to improve it have gone nowhere.

 Before then, on October 14, 2021, a United Emirates pilot lodged complaints about quality of the runway surface, missing markings infrequently updated Automatic Terminal Information Service, which is supposed to be a round-the-clock deluge of information about conditions at the airport to inform landing and departure decisions.

 Runway 17/35 was resurfaced in 2020, at the peak of Covid-19, by China Communication Construction Company (CCCC), a Chinese contractor, under phase one of the $200m upgrade of Entebbe International Airport.

 We were unable by press time to speak to CCCC officials regarding the alleged quality concerns about the redone runway.

 The engineering works under the build and transfer contract included the construction of a cargo complex, a new terminal, resurfacing of the runway, taxiways, aprons and fixing water supply.

 Asked about claims that the runway is defective, and this caused the RwandAir plane to skid off, Mr Luggya said the solution to the counter-claims is “a comprehensive, non-partisan investigations”.

 “The weather [yesterday] was bad, but it may not [have been] the only cause. That is why a comprehensive investigation is key, and it has started to ascertain the cause of the incident,” he said by telephone.

 The last major landing-related incident at Entebbe airport, which caused a shutdown of the operations for hours, was when an Ethiopian Airlines plane overshot the runway.

 A fire incident at the airport last year disrupted operations at the airport, but briefly.

Minutes before 3am on Thursday, Mr Luggya said RwandAir aircraft had been removed from the runway and flights cleared to resume.

“Following successful removal of the Rwanda Air aircraft from the runway strip, flights in and out of Entebbe International Airport have been cleared to resume,” he tweeted at 2:44am.

Baffling

However, the failure to pull out a careered plane for nearly 20 hours, leading to a temporary closure of the country’s only international airport, baffled aviation experts.

 No plane yesterday landed or departed from the facility after the incident, leading to significant loss of businesses and earnings.

 With outbound passengers stranded, hotels on the peninsula were reportedly oversubscribed.

 Other travellers either short on cash, or poised for urgent business trips, took to twitter to vent their pain and frustration. Some shared pictures of inquisitive colleagues huddling for answers at the counters.

 “Passengers stranded at Entebbe Airport as flights are cancelled due to a problem on the main runway. Hoping that the relevant authorities can resolve the issue quickly, while communicating promptly and clearly,” tweeted Mr Crispin Kaheru, a commissioner with the Uganda Human Rights Commission, a statutory rights watchdog.