Chaos after airport hit by catastrophic power failure

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FIONA MACKAY NEWS REPORTER

He said: “The fault also prevented our back-up system from operating. This was caused by a catastrophic failure in one of our transformers.

“We are currently working to understand the full cause of the issue and why the redundancy didn’t function as designed.”

Miranda Hurst, from Edinburgh, who was flying to London, said: “I was on the airport bus when we were told the bus couldn’t go any further as there had been a power cut so the barrier could not be lifted.

“So we had to walk. When I arrived at the terminal the lights were off and nobody knew what was happening.”

Planes were able to take off and land. However there were reports that around 30 flights were forced to sit on the runway while the security gates were down.

One person tweeted: “Stuck in chaos. What modern airport doesn’t have emergency back up power. Total fiasco.”

Lothian Buses also said its services were unable to make their way into the airport due to the blackout.

A spokesman from the airport confirmed power was returned to the terminal around 10am though there were still delays for passengers while they cleared the backlog.

On the airport’s Twitter account, staff said that flights today would not be affected.

Passengers queue outside Edinburgh Airport after the power cut plunged the terminal into darkness.

It said: “The power is all back and running, flights have resumed and service is returning as normal.”

Last week, a survey revealed that the airport faced delays in nearly one in three flights, contributing to a surge in compensation claims from disgruntled passengers.

Already, around 27 per cent of flights at Edinburgh Airport this year have been delayed by at least 15 minutes, which is an increase from 20.1 per cent just two years ago.

Consumer watchdog group Which? said at the time that holidaymakers are most likely to face delays when using Edinburgh than any other Scottish airport.