Who else had the misfortune to be airborne in the Nairobi area last night? It was quite an experience.... a power outage (second or third in recent days) caused a failure of most of JK's key services - such as radar, ILS, runway lights, radio frequencies to the detriment and consternation of the various small aircraft and large airlines that were unlucky to be trying to get in or out of the area!!!
I was coming in after dark to Wilson - which as it has no IFR approach, requires an ILS into JKIA with an overshoot to a VFR landing at Wilson. However inside the TMA I discovered that the power was out, and one poor controller (well done that man!!!) was struggling to keep planes from colliding into each other. With only one frequency working he was desperately trying to provide a manual radar service by asking aircraft to give their altitude, heading and distance from JK.
Can you imagine coming into an international airport with a full passenger airliner and being asked what radial and level are you because ATC don't know where you are or how close you are to other traffic?? "You might have traffic at your twelve o'clock but we have no radar". Its a very strange feeling to be up in the air on a moonless night with no 'safety net' around you. It was chaos with aircraft diverting to Mombasa, Kili, Eldoret etc and several light aircraft (myself included) opting to a do a GPS visual approach direct to Wilson - dodging circuit traffic doing training, and other traffic making a similar informal descent/arrival without radar/ATC.
With only one frequency you couldn't get a word in - even to tell the harassed controller you were leaving his frequency/control. He was handing all possible traffic off to other ATC services just to control the situation. Emirates, KQ and the rest of the 'big boys' must have been having one hell of a night dealing with all of this and the subequent paperwork!!
One of my passengers today says that when they did finally make it to JKIA later that same night, it was still without runway lights - not sure how that works with airline aviation regulations?!
It was a really unnerving scenario and not one I care to repeat. So to everyone who was out there, well done for making it home. Fly safely (and thanks to the one lonesome controller for doing his best..)
