The radar system at the north’s Ercan (Tymbou) airport was broken on Friday night.

The north’s civil aviation department’s director Mustafa Soli confirmed that the system was broken, and said backup systems were “active” and that flights were continuing to take off and land at the airport.

“The malfunction that was experienced is one that can be encountered in aviation. There is no disruption in services. The backup systems are active. Flights are continuing,” he said.

Turkish Cypriot air traffic controllers’ union (HTKS) chairman Cem Kapisiz was less relaxed about the system, however, telling newspaper Yeni Duzen, “we are currently providing a manual service because the radar is broken”.

“We have gone back to the 1950s,” he added.

He explained that with the radar system down, if two aeroplanes arrive to land at the airport at the same time, one is kept waiting in the air while the other lands and is serviced before the next one can land.

The system’s breakdown, he said, is “due to a lack of investment”.

“We are trying to act quickly and safely. We are trying to achieve this with primitive methods,” he added, before saying that the “primitive method” in question is that “there is no screen in front of us and we act on whatever information we receive from the aircraft”.

“We write the information down when we get it from the aircraft, we work on timing, and then we direct it,” he said.

The breakdown comes shortly after HTKS members had intended to go on strike demanding, among other things, that the “minimum requirements” for aviation services are reached.

Kapisiz had said at the time that his union had issued many warnings, and now we are warning them again”, but that “no change has happened”.

“The minimum standards required when providing aviation services are there in writing and they must be strictly adhered to. Every service provided in aviation must be uninterrupted and have redundancy built in,” he said.

The strike eventually did not go ahead after the ‘government’ decreed that it be suspended.