Phones down at Yeager for two days

Yeager Airport may switch telephone service providers after spending most of the weekend without service.

Rick Atkinson, the airport's director, said phone service went out at the hilltop airport Friday evening.

Service was restored at 4 p.m. Monday, said Mike Minnis, a spokesman for Lumos Networks, which was created in August as the new wire-line service provided by the former FiberNet, which was purchased by nTelos last year.

"We've had trouble before, and there's been times where there have been issues, but it's never been anything this long," Atkinson said. "I'm seriously thinking about changing carriers.

"For it to be out this long is simply unacceptable."

The airport actually had two separate incidents back to back, Minnis said.

Technicians from Lumos Networks went to the facility Friday evening to try to restore service but could not immediately fix the problem. Minnis said Lumos leases the circuits at the airport from Frontier Communications to provide services.

He said Lumos technicians worked with Frontier to diagnose and repair the problem as a circuit failure. Service then was restored at 4:30 p.m. Saturday.

Technicians confirmed Sunday morning that service had been restored, but they received a call at 9 a.m. Monday from airport officials informing them the phones were out again.

The second issue was an equipment failure, Minnis said. Service was restored by Monday afternoon.

Atkinson said phone service was out most of the day Sunday as well.

No major problems resulted from the outage. Service for the airlines, airport fire brigade and Federal Aviation Administration offices were not affected.

Atkinson said an area manager from Frontier Communications contacted him Monday morning to offer assistance.

Atkinson said the manager offered to have Frontier technicians go to the airport to try to solve the problem but needed some information from Lumos first. He was told Lumos didn't contact Frontier until Monday afternoon.

"They (Lumos) have taken too much time to fix this," Atkinson said.

He is considering changing carriers to Frontier, which already provides the airport's wireless Internet service. He said Frontier always has been prompt in addressing any problems.

"I've been impressed with Frontier's service," he said. "The level of service is much better."

Contact writer Ashley B. Craig at [email protected] or 304-348-4850.