Bermuda's airport boss Aaron Adderley has welcomed reassurances from the US Federal Aviation Administration that contingency procedures were in full effect during a two day outage of the local radar last month.

Mr. Adderley had already stated that contingency plans were in place at L.F Wade International Airport to ensure operations after media reports earlier this week of safety concerns on the part of US controllers.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) members — who handle Bermuda's airspace from New York — had claimed controllers were guiding planes with little more than common sense and communications due to the outage.

Despite Mr. Adderley's moves to allay fears about the local situation, a question mark remained until yesterday over claims from the NATCA that there was a risk of an accident because there were no such contingency plans in the US.

Following previously-scheduled talks in Washington yesterday, Mr. Adderley said he had been assured by the FAA that staff at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center — who are responsible for guiding traffic into and through Bermuda airspace — put into effect non-radar procedures when the Bermuda radar was not in service.

A statement from FAA officials said that those procedures "provided for no disruption or safety issues for aircraft entering or transiting Bermuda airspace or landing at LF Wade International" during the period in question.

Mr. Adderley welcomed the reassurances. "The Bermuda airport and the FAA have a signed letter of agreement that specifies operating procedures and we have been assured that prescribed procedures have been in place for both normal radar and non-radar situations," he said.

"The fact that we have a brand new multi-million dollar radar already installed at L.F. Wade and ready for use in September following the completion of pre-requisite training for our technicians and controllers, will certainly minimise the possibility of having to utilise the alternate procedures altogether."