HUMAN error has been attributed as the cause of a Royal Flying Doctor Service plane being delayed at the Millicent airport on Monday night.
A plane transferring an adult requiring urgent medical care was grounded for a few hours as the 80 runway landing lights at the Wattle Range Council owned and managed facility were not operational.
Chief executive Ben Gower said the problem lay with the actions of a contractor who had earlier upgraded the meter box at the request of a power company.
Mr Gower said there had been no prior contact made with either council or the Millicent Gliding Club about these actions and no testing of the runway lights had been done.
According to Mr Gower, a fuse had been placed incorrectly leading to the malfunction.
“It was an unfortunate set of circumstances,” Mr Gower said.
“I was alerted at about 7.30pm and we had people from the Gliding Club, Rapid Response and engineering team there and fault finding was undertaken.”
“We will improv our management systems with locks at the airport to make sure contractors cannot have access.”
The plane had landed during the hours of daylight but could not take off at around dusk.
After an on-the-ground intervention, the runway landing lights were successfully activated and the Adelaide-bound plane was able to take off at about 9.15pm.
On average, the RFDS makes 100 landings in Millicent each year and they involve medical retrievals and patient transport.
Several years ago, the landing lights at Millicent airport could not be activated at 2am due to an equipment failure.
As a result, the Millicent State Emergency Service was mobilised and the headlights from its vehicles and others, were used to light up the runway.
These actions enabled the RFDS plane to land and complete an emergency medical retrieval.
