Flyer aiming to open by CNY
Mon, Jan 12, 2009
By Andre Yeo, The New Paper

THE Singapore Flyer is aiming to swing into action when the Year of the Ox is ushered in on 26 Jan.

But Flyer operators admit it's a tough deadline made trickier because it would also depend on whether the police will allow them to resume operations.

The Flyer ground to a halt after an electrical fire at 4.50pm on 23 Dec, trapping 173 passengers in the 28 capsules.

Dive-Marine Services were called in by the Flyer's owners to rescue the passengers, and 11 people were lowered with ropes before the wheel began spinning again about six hours later.

It has since remained grounded and will continue to be so until back-up systems have been tested and safety procedures are in place.

The Flyer's chairman, Mr Florian Bollen, 43, said they were working towards ensuring the incident is never repeated by introducing two back-up systems.

There is now only the primary drive system and a back-up power supply system to run the wheel. The back-up system was supposed to continue to turn the wheel should something go wrong.

But the fire happened in an area that affected both systems and the wheel stopped turning completely.

They will now introduce a secondary system that will be located several metres from the Flyer and will have its own controls and power supply.

Should something go wrong, this other system will be activated to keep the wheel turning without passengers noticing anything wrong.

They expect to take 45 minutes to an hour to evacuate everybody.

How the passengers will be informed when the second system kicks in is still being finalised in the standard operating procedure (SOP).

If this system also fails, another back-up winching system will kick in.

Two winches, one on each side of the wheel, powered by a generator, will be used to turn the Flyer.

The advantage to this is that they will be relying on the forces of gravity to keep the wheel moving as they empty capsule by capsule.

The Flyer expects passengers to be able to reach the ground in about two hours, although that time is still being calculated.

Criticism

Last month's incident was the latest of several cases of the Flyer stalling. But it was the longest incident, leading to harsh criticism from the public about the operators' handling of the rescue.

The Flyer's vice president (operations), Mr Yazed Osman, 39, acknowledged that in the old SOP, contacting the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) was not a priority.

Indeed, the SCDF arrived only at 8pm, more than three hours after passengers were first left stranded.

Flyer operators were only relying on Dive-Marine's rope specialists.

Now, they have realised that calling the SCDF and the police would be one of the first things they would have to do in an emergency.

Referring to the primary drive system, Mr Bollen said: 'We learnt this system can go wrong.

'We may be going overboard here (with the two backup systems), but as a company, we want to make sure this does not happen again.'

This article was first published in The New Paper on Jan 10, 2009.