Le Tri Tinh, who was in charge of a working shift during which a first-ever power outage occurred at Tan Son Nhat airport, was arrested on December 11 for further investigations on violation of traffic safety regulations.

Tinh and his team were on duty at the Ho Chi Minh City Area Control Centre (ACC/HCM) on November 20, carrying out regular check on uninterruptible power supply (UPS) devices.

At 11 am, they shut down the grid to examine these (UPS) devices, which were reportedly functioning properly at the moment but going wrong five minutes later.

At 11:20 am, the team members isolated the devices in accordance with the safety process. However, Tinh interfered in the system worsening the situation. Since then, all UPS devices went off and failed the whole electricity system of the centre.

At 11:40 am, the technical failure was completely fixed.

The power outage disabled the radar system controlling air traffic, affecting at least 54 flights that were within the city’s flight information region (FIR) at that time.

Most of the ACC/HCM’s staff involved in the case was suspended from work.

The unprecedented serious incident is still under investigation.-VNA