Table Mountain Cableway operational after ‘load shedding’ sees tourists stuck at top

[Lisbeth]

2019-12-09 21:36 - Selene Brophy

South Africa is in the grips of severe load shedding due to issues with power utility Eskom - affecting all and sundry - even popular tourist attractions and their back-up generators.

Power cuts are believed to be behind the delays that saw a group of tourists stuck on top of Africa's top attraction.

At 6:20pm on 9 December 2019, Table Mountain Cableway posted to twitter saying it was experiencing technical issues - delaying cable car trips, with a group of tourists affected at the top of Table Mountain.



One of the tourists caught at the top, Arash Sadighi posted a tweet complaining about 20-minute delays. At about 07:27pm Table Mountain Cableway posted that it had resolved its technical issues and would be getting everybody down as quickly as possible.



Wahida Parker, MD of Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company has since issued a statement saying "power surges are believed to have caused the failure of our generator".

"Table Mountain Aerial Cableway can confirm that visitors who were stuck on the top of the mountain earlier today when our backup generator failed to kick into gear, are now being safely brought down from the mountain."

Visitors who were at the bottom waiting to go up, have been offered free tickets for an alternative day.

"Our technical team is monitoring the impact of the sudden implementation of stage 6 load shedding, to best accommodate our visitors in a safe and responsible manner. We are doing everything within our power to make sure that any visitor's experience of Table Mountain is a positive one, even under these extreme conditions," says Parker.

The Cableway later tweeted that all visitors were safely transported back down.



The Cableway posted a message to Facebook stating that it is operational again, saying "our technical issue has been resolved and our cable car trips have resumed".

https://www.traveller24.com/News/touris ... n-20191209