Officials stationed in the airport’s control tower confirmed that operations at the airport were “sluggish.”
“We are still running normally. I mean right now it is a bit slow because of the rain; however, the flights are called they are going,” an air traffic official who asked not to be named told the Nassau Guardian Sunday afternoon.
Still, the officer added that extensive delays might have occurred if airplane pilots had decided that the weather was too poor to travel in.
“The only thing that would hinder them is the weather itself and not anything that would be going on operationally here,” the control tower official explained. “Pilots will have to be determining if they were going to want to come through the weather or whether or not they were going to be able to see the runway when they land. If they couldn’t they were going to have to hold outside of the airport. And if it gets really bad they would have had to return to the place they came from.”
Up until press time there was no word indicating the airport had been shut down.
Meanwhile, a state-of-the-art weather radar system that was installed on the airport grounds a year ago is said to be aiding traffic control services.
According to Transport and Aviation officials, besides improving the national weather tracking and warning system, The Doppler Radar, has also played a huge role in air traffic control. Linked to the control tower at the Lynden Pindling International Airport, the radar will help air traffic controllers to better coordinate takeoffs and landings with weather conditions.
As a result of the technology, a number of people’s roles will be enhanced, including engineers’ gauging of rainfall intensity to address flooding, firefighters’ tracking of bush-fires and emergency management officials’ response to disasters such as oil spills, Transport and Aviation Minister Glenys Hanna-Martin said at the radar’s launching last June.
She commissioned the $1.4 million state-of-the-art Doppler Radar at the Bahamas Meteorological Department on the same rainy day the Atlantic Hurricane season began.
By: JASMIN BONIMY, The Nassau Guardian
