At least three flights from Bar­ba­dos to Trinidad and To­ba­go were can­celled tonight as the Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (GA­IA) in Bar­ba­dos was shut down due to a faulty run­way edge lights cir­cuit.

The three flights were Caribbean Air­lines' BW 400 which was due to leave Bar­ba­dos at 8.40 pm, KLM's KL781 which was due to leave Bar­ba­dos at 9.05 pm and Caribbean Air­lines' BW417 which was due to leave Bar­ba­dos at 9.30 pm.

A state­ment from Bar­ba­dos' Min­is­ter of Tourism and In­ter­na­tion­al Trans­port, Ian Good­ing-Edghill said the prob­lem oc­cured around 5.40 pm.

"To­day I re­ceived a re­port from the Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port of a faulty run­way edge lights cir­cuit. This will im­pact in­com­ing and de­part­ing flights at GA­IA be­gin­ning this evening, Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 14, 2023. The elec­tri­cal team at the air­port is cur­rent­ly as­sess­ing the sit­u­a­tion to see where the fault oc­curred," the state­ment said.

The Min­is­ter added that as a con­se­quence, the Civ­il Avi­a­tion De­part­ment is­sued what is known as a 'no­tice to air­men' to alert the air­lines and air op­er­a­tors of the is­sue and ad­vise them of the run­way clo­sure.

He said teams at the air­port were able to work quick­ly to fa­cil­i­tate the de­par­tures of Air Cana­da's AC 963 and British Air­ways BA 254 which both left safe­ly.

A to­tal of 11 out­go­ing and in­com­ing flights were af­fect­ed by the clo­sure which is sched­uled to con­tin­ue un­til 6.06 am Wednes­day.

"As I stat­ed ear­li­er, the elec­tri­cal teams on the ground are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to as­sess and re­pair the dam­age, and an­oth­er re­port will be is­sued to­mor­row morn­ing. We ac­knowl­edge that this in­ter­rup­tion will im­pact both in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers and Bar­ba­di­ans us­ing the air­port.

The man­age­ment team at the air­port is work­ing with the air­lines, Bar­ba­dos Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (BH­TA), and oth­er

stake­hold­ers to fa­cil­i­tate ac­com­mo­da­tion of im­pact­ed pas­sen­gers," the Min­is­ter said.

Caribbean Air­lines con­firmed that it's flights to Bar­ba­dos yes­ter­day evening were al­so can­celled as a re­sult of the air­port's clo­sure.