Airlines iron out blackout wrinkles
Analysts depict it a caution for grid
A power failure at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport that stranded thousands of passengers and snarled U.S. holiday air traffic is evidence of vulnerability in the nation’s electric grid, analysts said Monday.
The 11-hour blackout Sunday at the world’s busiest airport was caused by a fire in an underground electrical facility that also knocked out backup supplies, said Southern Co.’s Georgia Power utility. Frustrated passengers were left scrambling in the dark while more than 1,000 flights were canceled.
The lights were back on Monday and the airport was busier than usual — a lot busier. Hundreds of passengers whose flights were canceled Sunday were jammed into lines that snaked toward distant ticket counters. Delta Air Lines grounded 300 flights Monday, most of which were bound for Atlanta early Monday morning, the company said in a statement.
The Atlanta-based airline said Monday’s wave of cancellations was designed to restore order to its frazzled schedule, which the company hoped to have fixed by Monday afternoon.
Delta was one of the hardest-hit companies by
the power failure.
Major airlines, including American, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest and United, waived certain fees or charges for passengers with imminent travel to, from or through Atlanta. Southwest said it was operating its full schedule Monday after scrapping 70 flights Sunday.
Georgia Power said electricity for “all essential airport activities” had been restored Sunday just before midnight, allowing everything from concourse lights to baggage carousels to switch back on.
“This highlights two things,” said Paul Patterson, a utility analyst for Glenrock Associates LLC. “One, the grid is vulnerable. Secondly, it shows how dependent the modern economy is on reliable electric power.”
The airport blackout comes on the heels of hurricanes and wildfires that knocked out electricity service to millions of people from Florida to California. Earlier this year, power disruptions in New York City and San Francisco delayed commuters. Utilities say billions of dollars are needed to upgrade the nation’s aging infrastructure and make it more robust by investing in equipment sensors and other technologies that can be used to track and quickly resolve power failures.
The Atlanta incident “raises a question of whether a smart grid can help,” said Swami Venkataraman of Moody’s Investors Service. “Sensors can give you real-time information on important equipment across the grid that allows you to do preventative maintenance to avoid these type of issues.”
A piece of switch gear in an underground electrical facility could have failed and started the fire that caused the trouble in Atlanta, Georgia Power said in a statement. Firefighters had to clear dangerous fumes and smoke from the underground facilities before utility workers could gain access to carry out repairs.
While most power at the Atlanta airport was restored around midnight, some operations had yet to return fully as of 8:30 a.m. Monday, airport spokesman Reese McCranie said.
The delays in Atlanta led to canceled flights at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/ Adams Field in Little Rock. Also, several hundred passengers on Delta flights to Atlanta from cities including Denver and Dallas were diverted to the Little Rock airport Sunday and spent Sunday night in Little Rock. On Monday, two delayed flights to Atlanta left Little Rock between 10:15 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., according to airport spokesman Shane Carter.
Those flights, in addition to delays for people scheduled to fly Monday from Little Rock to Atlanta, made for long lines, he said.
Flights from Little Rock were back on track Monday morning, Carter said, though he advised passengers to monitor Delta’s flight schedule just in case.
“When you have something as massive as this situation has been, it takes awhile to return back to normal,” he said.
Questions will be asked about why it took so long for Georgia Power to restore electricity, and state utility regulators say they will review the incident.
The blackout adds to a tumultuous year for Southern Co. It wrote down billions after scrapping a first-of-its kind “clean coal” project in Mississippi, and the fate of an overbudget and long-delayed nuclear project was thrown into disarray by the bankruptcy of a contractor. The utility will find out later this week whether it can complete its nuclear project in Georgia.
Southern Co. shares fell 1.5 percent Monday to close at $50.55 in New York. The stock is up 3 percent this year.
“It’s not a good time for them to be high profile with a power failure,” said Kit Konolige, an analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.
The Atlanta airport is a regional economic engine that hosts about 275,000 passengers a day. Speaking there Sunday, city officials repeatedly apologized for the power failure that left bustling corridors largely lit only by the glow of cellphones.
“Georgia Power has many redundant system and sources of power in place to ensure reliability for the airport and its millions of travelers — power outages affecting the airport are very rare,” the company said in a statement. “The company will continue to actively work with the airport to address any remaining impacts in nonessential areas of the airport, determine the cause of today’s incident and prevent future occurrences.”
Mayor Kasim Reed of Atlanta said late Sunday that there was “no evidence to suggest that the fire was caused deliberately.” The chief executive of Georgia Power, Paul Bowers, said on ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday that he expected the investigation to last throughout the week.
But the immediate fallout was immense. Passengers from Paris to Portland, Ore., had their trips canceled. Some flights were diverted — airports serving Cincinnati and
New York City were among those that took in Atlanta-bound planes — and hotels near Hartsfield-Jackson airport were crammed. Atlanta officials opened the Georgia International Convention Center as a shelter, but many passengers sought accommodations elsewhere.
Robert Mann, an aviation consultant and former American Airlines executive, said it likely will be today 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.
Information for this article was contributed by Mark Chediak, Brian Eckhouse and Michael Sasso of Bloomberg News; by Alan Blinder and Richard Fausset of the New York Times; by Terrence Cullen of the New York Daily News; by Rachel Herzog of Arkansas Online; and Jonathan Landrum Jr. of The Associated Press.