A problem with a temperature sensor at Durango-La Plata County Airport had airplanes temporarily unable to land or take off Sunday – although only one US Airways incoming flight was affected.
Issues with the sensor began Saturday afternoon. However, a decision to hold flights wasn’t made until late Sunday morning, and the hold on flights lasted until 1 p.m. Sunday.
According to Federal Aviation Administration regulations, commercial flights may not take off or land without temperature sensors.
Aviation Director Kip Turner said the issue with the Automated Surface Observation System was resolved Sunday afternoon, and scheduled flights resumed.
Turner said the equipment problem was not related to last month’s airport weather software update that had the flights at a standstill for three hours on Nov. 7.
“This was an issue with our ASOS, and the National Weather Service got it up and running,” he said.
Tom Renwick, a forecaster with the National Weather Service, said the temperature sensor may have had a malfunctioning fan used to pull air into a pipe to gauge temperature, but it was serviceable by technicians working from Grand Junction.
“We have technicians here who have (remote) access to all of the equipment in our forecast area,” Renwick said, “and they get in there and do some diagnostics and can fix it.
“They did it all from here, but we might have some guys come down this coming week.”
Turner said the weather service was instrumental in solving the problem.
“It was very nice, and we appreciate them working with us,” he said.
Just south of the airport’s commercial terminal, Avflight, a private flight service, was not affected.
bmathis@durangoherald.com
