A capacitor explosion caused Christchurch air traffic control to suffer an outage for nearly an hour, a report has found.
The report, released by the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC), looked into the causes of a radar outage experienced by Christchurch’s domestic air traffic control in 2019.
With 41 flights in the air, controllers couldn’t monitor the flights from their screens or use usual communication methods. All flights landed safely.
Auckland also temporarily lost the same surveillance services.
According to the TIAC report, an explosion in one of the electrolytic power capacitors caused a “complete loss of power and stopped functioning”.
The capacitor devices store energy, and when one exploded, it caused a short circuit.
While this shouldn’t have created an outage, incorrect systems “likely existed” since they were installed.
The report found the company in charge of the communications network, Airways, failed to properly check the power outages.
“If Airways had conducted the UPS power outage checks, it would have exposed the incorrect power connection issue with the MPLS and IPMux network equipment.
“This would have provided the opportunity for Airways to correct the power connection issues, thereby preventing the 2019 outage.”
The commission chose not to make any recommendations, as they felt Airway’s had properly addressed the issue.
Airways management “updated their preventative maintenance action procedures requiring UPS power outage checks to be completed on each UPS every six months.”
They also integrated risk evaluation framework into their business practices.
Capacitors have now been moved to separate rooms, as well as their backup generators.
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