Lima runway goes dark, stoking tension between Peru and airlines

Recent chaos at Peru’s main airport, including the lights going out Sunday night on its main runway while the second runway remains inoperative, has the global airline industry fuming and heading to the Andean nation looking for answers. IATA representatives plan to meet Peru’s Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzen on Monday to get to the bottom of the issue and review other longstanding concerns, said Peter Cerda, an IATA vice president who’ll be traveling to Lima for the meeting. “He’s finally decided to meet with us,” Cerda said of Adrianzen in an interview. “I think finally - because of what happened this past weekend - he’s realized that he cannot continue to ignore us.” The lights of the main runway in Lima’s Jorge Chavez suddenly went off Sunday evening forcing over 200 flights to be diverted to other airports, grounding dozens of other planes and impacting over 10,000 passengers, according to IATA figures. The chaos lasted 10 hours before the runway lights were fixed. So many planes were rerouted that some had to land in airports in Chile and Ecuador. Peru’s Transport Minister Raul Perez-Reyes told reporters this week that the incident was “fortuitous,” but local aviation officials have said they cannot rule out it happening again. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. “What is not comprehensible is that Peru didn’t have a contingency plan that was activated,” said Cerda. “You have a brand new second runway that was finished last year and it’s not being used even though it could have been used.”<br/>