Outage disrupts Atlanta airport
More than 1,000 flights are grounded
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 Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport by midnight.
Passengers at the airport were left in the dark when the lights went out at around 1 p.m. The outage halted all outgoing flights, and arriving planes were held on the ground at their point of departure, which was the case in Pittsburgh, where flights to Atlanta were canceled Sunday night, Pittsburgh International Airport spokesman Robert Kerlik said.
Another two flights were scheduled for later in the night and had not been canceled as of 6:30 p.m., he said.
International flights were being diverted, officials added.
Sara Melillo, who was traveling to Pittsburgh from Kenya,
where she lives with her husband, Greg Presto, to spend Christmas with his family was stuck on the tarmac with her husband for six hours. The couple had made stops in Nairobi and Amsterdam and landed shortly after the lights went out in Atlanta.
She said the pilot didn’t have a lot of information for the travelers but the plane had air conditioning and attendants offered water and juice a few times. She described the Delta terminal as “big chaos” with not enough customer service for the hundreds of people trying to find a flight to their next destination and a place to sleep for the night.
With her new boarding pass handwritten and her bags still stuck on a plane, Ms. Melillo was hopeful that she and her husband would be able to get a flight in the morning to Pittsburgh, she said as she waited for an Uber to take them to a hotel.
According to a Georgia Power statement, a fire in an underground electrical facility may have been responsible for the outage. The cause of the fire was not known.
“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. The utility said that there are “many redundant systems in place” to ensure the power supply to the airport and that such outages at the airport “are very rare.”
That wasn’t enough to comfort Jeff Smith, 46, of Pittsburgh, who ended up stuck in a plane on the tarmac for three hours after it landed.
“This is the worst experience I’ve ever had at an airport,” he said.
Delta, with its biggest hub operation in Atlanta, was set to be hardest hit. By evening, Delta had already canceled almost 800 Sunday flights Monday, and nearly another all of 250 them on tracking 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," Mr. Mann said. One bit of good news, according to Mr. Mann: Delta has more spare planes and available crews in Atlanta that anywhere else, which will help it to recover. The FAA said it would staff the airport control tower throughout the night so that it can handle flights once they resume. The FAA said the tower could operate normally but flights were affected because airport equipment in the terminals was not working.