Control tower breakdown brings flight chaos to Paris airport

An aviation root told AFP that a radar breakdown caused the airdrome chaos. Photo: Aurore MESENGE / AFP
Source: AFP

A power operation breakdown forced the cancellation of astir 130 flights astatine Paris Orly airdrome Sunday, leaving thousands of passengers to scramble for alternate routes, officials said.

A spokesperson for Aeroports de Paris, which operates the French capital's 2nd busiest airport, said astir 40 percent of the day's departures and arrivals had been called off.

France's DGAC civilian aviation authorization blamed "a nonaccomplishment of the aerial postulation power systems astatine the Orly operation aboriginal successful the afternoon" for what it said had been a "significant" simplification successful the fig of flights.

An aviation root told AFP that a radar breakdown caused the airdrome chaos.

The airdrome spokesperson said astir fractional the 130 cancelled flights were departures and fractional incoming flights.

Flights crossed France and to different European destinations and North Africa were among those hit. The DGAC would not accidental whether flights would instrumentality to mean connected Monday.

Stood adjacent a enactment of suitcases, Agnes Zilouri, 46, tried desperately to find a spot for her 86-year-old parent and six twelvemonth aged son. The household had been meant to instrumentality a formation to Oujda successful Morocco connected Sunday evening to spell to a funeral.

"The formation is cancelled. Fortunately I americium with my mother," she said.

Last twelvemonth Orly handled astir 33 cardinal passengers, astir fractional the fig of the main Paris Charles de Gaulle planetary airport.

Source: AFP