A faulty battery and charger are the reason why a flight from Vancouver was forced to turn around Saturday night after the Prince George Airport was among the areas struck when high winds forced power outages across the region.
A backup generator restored power to only a portion of the runway, Prince George Airport Authority spokeswoman Lindsay Cotter said Tuesday, while the plane's pilot was unable to activate a radio-controlled lighting system to make the runway safe for landing at night.
The outage hit at 11:35 p.m. and the backup lighting system, with the exception of the radio-controlled portion, was online by 11:38 p.m.
The rest of the lighting was restored manually 10 minutes later from the control tower, which is usually unmanned at night, Cotter said.
But by that time the plane, which had been circling the runway, had turned back to Vancouver. It eventually landed in Prince George at 12:45 a.m.
"The battery and charging system are being replaced to prevent this from happening again," Cotter said.
The airport was not the only place to suffer a power outage as winds with speeds of 61 kilometres an hour gusting to 80 km/h rushed through the region.
At about the same time, service to 2,039 customers in the Hart was knocked out for nearly four-and-a-half hours, and 398 customers in College Heights were without power for slightly more than six hours, starting just before midnight.
