MIAT, Mongolia’s national airline, says last week’s three-day closure of Buyant-Ukhaa airport’s main runway has cost it Tg 150 million (U.S. $170,000).
It blames airport authorities for the loss, and is seeking compensation from the airport and the Civil Air Transport Authority.
The country’s largest airport was closed to international traffic November 14, after a sudden cold snap turned snow on the runway into a sheet of ice five centimetres thick.
It reopened on the afternoon of November 17, after airport and airline employees, working round the clock, succeeded in clearing two thirds of the 155,000-metre surface. The airline also borrowed 30 tonnes of salt from Power Station #3 to sprinkle on the tarmac.
Domestic flights, which use smaller aircraft capable of landing on the airport’s unpaved strip, were not affected by the closure.
"I’ve worked here for 20 years and have never exper-ienced a closure because of heavy snow," says B. Ser-Od, the airport official in charge of runways. "We have cleaning equipment, but there was noth-ing we could do without de-laying foreign flights."
But MIAT blames airport workers for the delay of flights from Moscow, Beijing and Seoul by Aeroflot, Air China and Korean Airlines. Several hundred passengers booked on MIAT flights to Irkutsk, Bei-jing and Frankfurt were also held up in Ulaanbaatar for two days.
The airline had to cover food, transport and accommo-dation expenses for delayed passengers. And several Mon-golian participants in an ex-hibition in London, who had paid in advance, are asking MIAT to cover their losses.