Power outage paralyzes Atlanta airport
ATLANTA — A sudden power outage brought the world’s busiest airport to a standstill Sunday, grounding more than 1,000 flights in Atlanta just days before the start of the Christmas travel rush. Hours after the blackout began, authorities announced that electricity would be restored at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport by late Sunday night.
More than 20 flights here in Orlando were canceled because of the outage.
Officials said late Sunday that power had been restored to at least one concourse.
Georgia Power said in a statement that a fire caused extensive damage in an underground electrical facility, impacting substations serving the airport.
Passengers at the airport were left in the dark when the lights went out around 1 p.m. The outage halted all outgoing flights, and arriving planes were held on the ground at their point of departure. International flights were being diverted, officials said.
Delta, with its biggest hub operation in Atlanta, was hardest hit.
By evening, Delta had already canceled almost 800 Sunday flights and another 250 on Monday, nearly all of them in Atlanta, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.
Robert Mann, an aviation consultant and former American Airlines executive, said it likely will be Tuesday before Delta’s operations in Atlanta return to normal, and for passengers “it could be most of the week” because there aren’t many open seats on other flights in the last week before Christmas.
“Tomorrow is going to be a long and difficult day for everybody,” Mann said.
Mann said Delta has more spare planes and available crews in Atlanta than anywhere else, which will help it to recover. Still, when flights at Atlanta were grounded for most of one day last spring, it took Delta five days to recover.