‘Nightmare’ after power outage
Fire grounds passengers, flights at world’s busiest airport
NEW YORK — One of the heaviest travel weeks of the year began with the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights on Sunday at the world’s busiest airport in Atlanta, where a power outage that lasted nearly 11 hours left passengers stranded in darkened terminals or in aircraft idling on tarmacs.
The early afternoon outage paralyzed operations at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport before power was finally restored at 11:45 pm on Sunday for flight operations, wreaking havoc on holiday travel plans for thousands of people hit by airline cancellations extending into Monday.
Delta said it was cancelling about 300 flights on Monday, on top of the 900 Sunday cancellations as a result of the Atlanta outage. United Airlines also warned on social media that travel on Monday may be affected.
The incident on Sunday led the Federal Aviation Administration to ground flights bound for Atlanta. American Airlines and Southwest Airlines were also among major carriers that suspended operations at the airport on Sun- day. Southwest canceled 70 departures on Sunday.
Georgia Power, which provides electricity to the airport, said the failure was linked to a fire in an underground facility that damaged substations serving Hartsfield.
The blaze, possibly started when a piece of gear failed, damaged access to a backup system, the company said.
All passengers had safely disembarked from aircraft by approximately 10 pm, or nine hours after the outage began, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said on Twitter.
Photo and videos posted on social media showed passengers huddled in partial darkness inside crowded terminals. Some said they sat on planes for hours.
“Stuck on a plane at Atlanta Airport as the power is out there ... bedlam inside and boredom out here!” Jack Harris wrote on Twitter.
The FAA said earlier that it was staffed to handle the expected resumption of commercial traffic on Monday.
Some stranded passengers found lodging in local hotels, and the city was providing shelter at a convention center. By early Monday, airport officials said on social media that they had served more than 5,000 meals for passengers.
“We’re just focusing on the comfort of our passengers,” Reed told a news conference. “We know they have had a very, very long and difficult day.”
For all carriers, more than 1,170 flights in or out of Hartsfield were scratched Sunday, airline tracking service FlightAware said.
The airport handles 2,500 flights and an average of 275,000 passengers daily, according to its website.
Adding to the nightmare are what some passengers said was a lack of information from airport officials and help from first responders to get the disabled and the elderly through the airport without the use of escalators and elevators.
“They had these elderly people, handicapped people lined up in wheelchairs,” said stranded passenger Rutia Curry. “The people were helpless, they can’t get down the stairs, it was just a nightmare.”