False Fire Alarm At Changi Airport Control Tower Caused 50 Flights To Be Delayed & 9 Diverted

Have you ever experienced a flight delay and thought that it was your airline’s fault? Well, that might not always be the case.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore said that the control tower at Changi Airport was evacuated, resulting in fifty flights that were scheduled to take off to be delayed.

In addition to that, nine flights that were arriving had to be diverted after the Changi Control Tower had to be evacuated just after midnight in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

First fake news and now fake fires?

False Fire Alarm At Changi Airport Control Tower Caused 50 Flights To Be Delayed & 9 Diverted

The disruption occurred just after midnight but things went back to normal at 1.40am after the control tower resumed its operations, said Mr Rosly Saad, the director of air traffic services at CAAS.

He clarified that there was no actual fire.

Wait, so what or who triggered the fire alarm?

Investigations to find out what exactly happened are currently underway.

Flights Delayed

No one likes it when their flights are delayed and that fateful day, a total of 50 departure flights were delayed by 30 minutes or more and arriving flights were diverted.

Some passengers also shared that the Control Tower disruption had caused them to be delayed for two whole hours.

Understandably impatient netizens took to social media site Twitter to share their woes.

At least one guy tagged Changi Airport and requested for an update, stating that the Singapore Airlines flight that he was on, SQ208 had been diverted and was at Batam’s airport.

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.

— Ezra Hansen (@ezratphansen) January 22, 2020

Nice to see #changiairport runway has reopened…. while sitting in a refueling plane at KLIA #unscheduledpitstop #poweroftheInternet pic.twitter.com/10oFcxcPGP

— kiwethon (@kiwethon) January 22, 2020

Other netizens claimed that their flights had been diverted to other places, namely, Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

All flights are restricted from landing and take-offs, with arrivals held in holding patterns and delayed for 30-40mins, while departure flights are delayed for 2-3hours due to priority given for arrivals in case they ran out of fuel. No information given to airport staff too.

— kex (@xplorechangi) January 22, 2020

One netizen explains that flights scheduled to arrive were delayed for a shorter period compared to those waiting to depart due to priority given, just in case flights arriving run out of fuel.

Let’s hope that a situation like this doesn’t happen when we’re travelling. In the meantime, don’t forget your travel insurance!