Atlanta airport power back on after major delays
WASHINGTON: The world’s busiest airport, in the US city of Atlanta, said that power was back on after an outage left passengers in the dark and affected hundreds of flights.
“Power has been restored on all concourses,” the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport said on its Twitter account, about 11 hours after first reporting an electrical disruption.
Giving an idea of how many people were affected, the airport added: “5,000+ meals are being delivered to passengers.”
It did not indicate how long it might take to clear the backlog of flights but said it was offering affected passengers “free parking until 8am”, or for about eight hours after the lights came back on.
Flightview.com, which tracks air travel data, listed hundreds of flights as being delayed, cancelled or diverted since Sunday afternoon, but it also began to show several departures as scheduled for 6am yesterday.
The Georgia Power company, in a statement, said “power had been restored for all essential airport activities including all concourses and flight operations”.
It described the outage as “very rare”. Although the exact cause is not yet known, Georgia Power said preliminary investigation suggested that a fire damaged cables and caused the power disruption.
“No personnel or passengers were in danger at any time,” the company said.
Photos and videos from the airport showed people walking or sitting in crowded airport corridors, with windows only partially cutting through the gloom.
Numerous airplanes could be seen parked on the airport tarmac. — AFP