Perth Airport offers free parking to travellers following cancellations as they investigate cause of issue

Perth Airport will investigate what caused the fuel issue that forced the airport to come to a grinding halt late on Friday night and through to Saturday morning. There were 68 international and domestic flights that were either cancelled or diverted to regional airports after planes were unable to refuel when a problem with the load pressure in the fuel lines was detected about 11pm on Friday. Perth Airport chief executive Jason Waters said the fault was caused after air was sucked into the fuel distribution system. “Late last evening we encountered an event where we detected a reduction in the flow rate of jet fuel,” he told reporters on Saturday afternoon. “Air had sucked into the distribution system which had to be bled out to achieve full flow. “I say this in a preliminary way because it is all going to be subject to a full engineering review and investigation. “Our engineers and technicians have worked through the evening and early hours of this morning to identify, repair and re-test the system, such that as of just recently I can inform you that we are now back to refuelling operations, and obviously very keen to see a normal return to operations.” While refuelling has finally recommenced, the airport will now have to clear the backlog of dozens of delayed flights — which are expected to take off later on Saturday and into Sunday. “This has had a significant impact on flights overnight, there’s been a large number of cancelled and both delayed flights as a result of that,” Mr Waters said. He said the airport was “very apologetic and sympathetic” to passengers impacted by the major delay, and that the flight backlog was expected to clear by Sunday — but there were no guarantees. “We’re going to work really hard with our airlines here to ensure we get things back to normal as quickly as possible,” he said. “I’d like to think by this evening and into tomorrow we’ll have it dealt with. “But given we are talking about long-haul flights and the extent of the backlog, it may take some time.” The airport boss said all parking fees would be waived for those who had spent hours parked at the airport, but urged travellers to contact their airlines for reimbursements beyond that. “We just encourage passengers to work with airlines and then we will pick up the matter with airlines next week,” Mr Water said. “It’s clearly a significant incident, it’s something we treat with the utmost seriousness. “We’re going to do everything we can now to get things back to normal and make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Transport Minister Rita Saffioti said on Saturday that shutdowns and flight cancellations “happen around the world”, but acknowledged they impacted thousands of customers and said it was “regrettable”.