MONROVIA – Quite contrary to the justification that the management of the Liberia Airport Authority (LAA) gave to the Senate Joint Committee on Energy and Transport on Wednesday, April 2, 2025 at the Capitol Building in Monrovia, that the recent power outage at the Roberts International Airport (RIA) was caused by birds sitting on the transformer, Information Minister Jerolinmek Matthew Piah on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 during his MICAT regular press briefing quashed all flimsy justifications for the airport terminal building being without power when an SN Brussels flight from Freetown landed at the RIA.
According to Information Minister Piah who himself was abroad the SN Brussels flight that day, traveling from Brussels to Freetown, and from Freetown to Monrovia, when the flight landed at the Roberts International Airport, the runway was lighted while the terminal building was pitch dark, a situation which caused the airport to inform all passengers to return the next day to claim their luggage because the terminal was without electricity, therefore, the conveyor belt which conveyed the luggage from the plane to the terminal could not function.
“It was just at the point of disembarking that the team on the flight announced that the passengers would have to receive their luggage because the terminal was without electricity, and so, they would not be able to offload the luggage.
“So, we disembarked, and once we got out of the plane we found out that the terminal building was dark, but the runway was lighted, clearly lighted. That’s where the flight was going to land in the first place. And the VIP, I am not talking about the Presidential lounge, but the small one that was used before, also had electricity. So, we proceeded there.
“And I asked why it is possible for the runway to be operational with full lighting but not the terminal. And the explanation was based on what happened in the past, where the entire system was laid as one. There were two different instances with the same SN Brussels where the flight was not able to land even though it approached the runway to land, where it had to ascend and to go to Freetown. They learned some lessons from that. So they had a system that keeps the runway 24/7 lighted. So, even if the whole airport, in terms of the terminal building, is dark, flights will be able to land. Nobody could claim bags, and nobody could use torchlights to claim bags because the baggage had not been discharged from the flight. When you take baggage from the flight, they go over the conveyor belt to roll into the terminal. So, if the entire terminal is without electricity, it means the conveyor bolt is not working. So, how can someone suggest that people were using flashlights to go into the terminal to claim their bags?
“The flight has already announced that bags will be received tomorrow because the terminal is without electricity. We don’t provide justification for that, and as the spokesman of the government, I will say it,” Minister Piah said.
President Boakai frowns on RIA electricity snafu
The Information boss further informed Liberians that the Government of Liberia is taking the matter seriously, something which President Boakai himself has expressed keen interest in.
“The fact that there was no electricity in the terminal should not have happened, and the President of the country took that matter very seriously. He instructed the very night that he needed an incident report to be available to his office by morning the next day. That incident report was submitted, additional meetings were held, with the President himself involved to get into what really took place.
“And frankly as a government, there is no appetite to see a repeat of the situation whereby the terminal building will be without electricity. So, we don’t provide defense for that. The explanation we try to give is not to give any justification because what took place in the terminal building should never have happened,” Minister Piah said.
It can be recalled that the Liberia Airport Authority (LAA) and the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) appeared before the Senate’s Joint Committee on Energy and Transport during a public hearing on Wednesday, April 2, 2025 to determine the cause of the embarrassing power outages at the RIA.
LAA Deputy Managing Director for Technical Services, Mr. Jonathan Enders, attributed the outage to a “bird strike”, which damaged the transformer and severely affected the automatic transfer switch (ATS).
Representing the LEC, Engineer Thomas Z. Gonkerwon recommended a review of the internal configuration of the ATS, the establishment of an alternative or bypass connection to mitigate future incidents, and the installation of a standby transformer with a bypass connection for unhindered power supply to the RIA facilities.
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