Lights at the runway and taxiway of the Francisco C. Ada-Saipan International Airport might be operational tonight should the testing that will be done the whole day today is successful.<\/p>\n
\u201cDepending on the testing tonight, we\u2019ll somehow announce tomorrow if we are conducting a status update,\u201d said airport manager Edward Mendiola at a briefing yesterday.<\/p>\n
Should the lights pass the test, the Notice to Airmen that was earlier issued will be amended. Currently, it says that only day operations are allowed at the airport until Dec. 7.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf everything is successful tonight [and] if according to FAA rules and regulations it is acceptable for travel or landing or takeoff in the airfield, then we will allow [the use of the runway],\u201d Guam lead electrician Richard Cabrera said.<\/p>\n
Cabrera said they have to monitor the lights from around 9pm last night until this afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of the test is keeping that power on so that whatever transformer out there that is ready to blow will be found,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
6,000 feet of cables<\/strong><\/p>\n Approximately 6,000 linear feet of cable has been pulled and Cabrera\u2019s team from Guam spent the entire day yesterday making the connections.<\/p>\n Aside from Cabrera and electrician\u00a0Peter Sablan, one more personnel from the Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport is assisting the Saipan airport.<\/p>\n \u201cIf he didn\u2019t come in Monday night, we wouldn\u2019t be able to pull all the wires,\u201d Cabrera said.<\/p>\n As of yesterday afternoon, one of the airport\u2019s four hand holes still needed its wires to be repaired.<\/p>\n This will bring the airfield up to 80 percent operational.<\/p>\n \u201cThe objective is to make the airfield operational again,\u201d Cabrera said.<\/p>\n Landing options<\/strong><\/p>\n Cabrera said he hopes to find the problem for the rest of the 20 percent after they successfully light the runway and taxiway partially.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m hoping to find the problem from Bravo to Alpha 7 before the weekend,\u201d Cabrera said.<\/p>\n According to Mendiola, the airfield being at 80 percent functionality will be sufficient for the airport\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t really affect the operation because they will be able to land and take off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe part that they are concerned about is the direction of the wind and how the aircraft is going to land,\u201d Cabrera said.<\/p>\n Should the lights be turned on tonight, aircraft would only have the option to fly in coming in the direction from Tinian at Runway 7.<\/p>\n Mendiola said the other option, through Runway 2-5, which is coming from the other side, is utilized when there is wind shear but that seldom happens.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they\u2019re supposed to land from the other direction, the authority can still assist them,\u201d Cabrera said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lights at the runway and taxiway of the Francisco C. Ada-Saipan International Airport might be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[8484,51,309,492],"class_list":["post-215802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-edward-mendiola","tag-guam","tag-ok","tag-test"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}