Bad weather affects aircraft landing |23 January 2018

Following reports that two aircraft were having difficulty to land at the Seychelles International Airport yesterday because of bad weather, Seychelles NATION looked into this issue.

A statement provided by the SCAA’s Air Navigation Services (ANS) notes that there was no incident as it was normal operations.

“When there is inclement weather an aircraft has to follow certain procedures. If certain parameters in the weather at that time do not meet their minimum requirements for operations (example visibility and wind), they follow such procedures to hold until that minimum is restored and they can safely attempt the landing,” says the statement.

“This is all that happened yesterday morning. However if the weather persists then they will opt to divert to their alternate aerodrome if their fuel does not allow them to hold further,” the statement adds.

The chief executive (CEO) of the Seychelles Meteorological Authority Vincent Amelie said the heavy rain is part of the annual rainy season.

“The rainy season was supposed to start since November but however during the period of December and January only a small amount of rain has been recorded with a minimum of 10mm,” he said.

He explained that the lack of rainfall during this rainy season is due to the formation of a series of cyclones in the southern region.

“There has been a restriction of rain in our region as the cyclones which have been affecting La Reunion and Mauritius are contributing to reduce cloud development for rainfall,” he said.

He said that as the latest cyclone subsides, we expect cloud activity to go back to normal so we can expect heavy rainfall to compensate for all the days when it has not rained since last year.

“410mm is the long term mean of rainfall for January as it is the peak of the rainy season, but so far like I have said since the beginning of January we have not received a lot of rainfall as we have seen a series of tropical depressions forming at a position which has contributed to limiting the development of clouds in our region. The moment the cyclones subside the rain belt will re-establish itself,” he said.

He said we can expect more rain before the rainy season ends in March.

Meanwhile the department of risk and disaster management received four reports of flooding yesterday, but there were no major incidents.

Flooding in Victoria