Fifty flights scheduled to depart Singapore were delayed this morning after the control tower was evacuated due to a false alarm.
Operations were disrupted 90 minutes starting just after midnight and the tower’s fire sprinklers activated, according to the Civil Aviation Authority, delaying departing flights for at least 30 minutes and causing nine to be diverted.
Good to know the systems are working, if unnecessarily and inconveniently.
“There was no fire. Investigations into the cause of the activation are on-going,” the authority said in a statement.
Passengers stranded at the airport took to Twitter to share their flight woes, including a man named Ezra Hansen, who said the Singapore Airlines flight SQ208 he was meant to board was diverted to Indonesia’s Batam island.
“Hi @ChangiAirport, will you be updating on the current shutdown of Changi air traffic control? Our @SingaporeAir flight #SQ208 is current sitting on the tarmac #Batam airport after being diverted,” he tweeted. The airport did not respond.
Another traveler named Prajit Nanu said his flight was delayed two hours.
“2 hours delay @ChangiAirport. No ETA or communication,” he wrote, without revealing his flight details.
Oliver Dave said a Scoot flight was diverted to the Paya Lebar Air Base.
You’re lucky you had some fuel! Many flights diverted to KUL and Batam. One particularly unlucky flight is a Scoot 787 that landed in Paya Lebar Air Base. Will be a long night for them 😬.
— Oliver Dave (@itsoliverdave) January 22, 2020
Singapore Airlines and Scoot had not responded to Coconuts Singapore’s messages seeking comment inquiries as of publication time.
More news from the Little Red Dot at Coconuts.co/Singapore.
