Outage forces O.C. airport to cancel all flights

A power outage Friday night at John Wayne Airport in Orange County forced officials to cancel all flights for the evening.

Airport spokeswoman Deanne Thompson said all flights scheduled to arrive after 7:30 p.m. had been diverted to other airports. People awaiting incoming flights were advised to call the airlines to find out where passengers would be landing, she said.

All flights scheduled to leave after 8 p.m. would not be departing, Thompson said. She did not know how many passengers were likely to be affected.

Late Friday, the airport’s Twitter feed said all terminal power was slowly coming back on line. General aviation flights were not affected by the outage or ground stop, which was to remain in effect until 7 a.m. Saturday. Those with flights in the morning were advised to check with their airline.

A problem with an electrical transformer in nearby Irvine caused the outage, Thompson said, which affected all three terminals at the airport.

Generators kicked in at 7:57 p.m., she said, so people were not sitting around in dark terminals.

“People are not happy, but they’re rolling with it. They realize we’re doing the best we can,” Thompson said.

Southern California Edison indicated on its website that more than 28,000 customers in Irvine were affected by the outage and that crews had not released information on the cause or repair efforts.

An outage at Los Angeles International Airport in June caused multiple flights to be canceled because of a glitch at a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power station.

Power was returning to all terminals at John Wayne Airport by late Friday. Travelers with Saturday morning flights were advised to check with their airline.