While power has been restored to the world’s busiest airport after almost 11 hours, the travel woes will linger for days.
Thousands of people were stranded yesterday morning at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia, where more than 1,000 flights were grounded just days before the start of the Christmas travel rush.
A sudden power outage that Georgia Power said was caused by a fire in an underground electrical facility brought the airport to a standstill on Sunday at about 1pm.
Photo: EPA
All outgoing flights were halted and arriving planes were held on the ground at their point of departure. International flights were being diverted, officials said.
Delta Air Lines, with its biggest hub in Atlanta, will be hardest hit. By Sunday evening, Delta had already canceled nearly 900 flights and another 300 yesterday, nearly all of them in Atlanta, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.
Robert Mann, an aviation consultant and former American Airlines executive, said Delta would likely have to wait until today for its operations in Atlanta to return to normal.
For passengers, “it could be most of the week” because there are not many open seats on other flights in the last week before Christmas, he said.
One bit of good news: Delta has more spare planes and available crews in Atlanta than anywhere else, which should help it to recover, he added
Still, when flights at Atlanta were grounded for most of one day last spring, it took Delta five days — and about 4,000 canceled flights — before it fully recovered.
Other airlines also canceled flights for the rest of Sunday. American Airlines canceled 24 departures and an equal number of arrivals, spokesman Ross Feinstein said.
The airline also diverted three planes that were headed to Atlanta when the outage struck, sending them instead to Dallas, Nashville and back to Philadelphia.
The city of Atlanta provided shuttle service to the Georgia Convention Center on Sunday for travelers needing a place to stay.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it would staff the airport control tower throughout the night so it could handle flights once they resume. It said the tower could operate normally, but flights were affected because airport equipment in the terminals was not working.
According to a Georgia Power statement, the utility believes a piece of equipment in an underground electrical facility might have failed, causing the fire. The fire was next to equipment for a backup system, causing that to also fail.
“No personnel or passengers were in danger at any time,” the statement said.
No areas outside of the airport were affected by the power loss.
Hartsfield-Jackson, which serves 104 million passengers a year, is the world’s busiest airport, a distinction it has held since 1998.
The airport serves an average of 275,000 passengers daily, according to its Web site. Nearly 2,500 planes arrive and depart each day.
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