New Delhi:
Flight operations at the swanky Indira Gandhi International airport in New Delhi came to a halt for over half an hour today after the main radar at the airport was accidentally shut down.
Sources told NDTV that electricians fixing a fault accidentally unplugged the main power source of the radar at about 12.15 pm this afternoon, drawing the display screens and radar to a complete blank.
Officials say though the standby power took over the system within seconds, it took over 45 minutes to reboot all consoles and restore the operations fully. Operations were shifted to a manual procedural control to assist the planes in air and for those lined up for a take-off. Aircraft are given directions by manual plotting and calculating their speed and height in this system.
Officials, however, said that there was not much disruption since the traffic was low and it did not pose any major problem.
The IGI airport is run by the Delhi International Airports Limited but the operations at the ATC tower are under the control of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the country's government-owned airport operator.