Atlanta could face a WEEK of travel misery: World’s busiest airport finally restores power after fire causes 11-hour blackout, cancels 1,200 flights and strands tens of thousands of passengers
Thousands of passengers were stranded at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Sunday
Georgia Power says outage was caused by a fire and it expects power was restored by midnight
However, the incident will cause problems for thousands hit by airline cancellations extending into Monday
Delta said it was cancelling 300 flights on Monday; United Airlines warned Monday travel may be affected
By Forrest Hanson and Jenny Stanton
DailyMail.com
18 December 2017
Power has been restored at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport after an outage caused by a fire led to more than 1,200 flight cancellations.
Passengers were left stranded on planes on the tarmac and in darkened terminals at the world’s busiest airport following the blackout on Sunday.
Even though power was finally restored at close to midnight Sunday, the incident continued to wreak havoc on holiday travel plans for thousands of people hit by airline cancellations extending into Monday and beyond.
Georgia Power said it believes a failure of its equipment may have started the fire and in a written statement, the firm said: ‘While evaluation of the incident is ongoing, Georgia Power believes that a piece of Georgia Power switchgear located in an underground electrical facility could have failed and started a fire.
‘This fire was located adjacent to redundant circuit cables and switching mechanisms serving the airport and those cables were damaged, resulting in the outage and loss of redundant service methods.’
Hundreds of flights are currently cancelled and the backlog could mean travel chaos lasting up to a week as airlines claw back their postponed flights.
Delta said it was cancelling about 300 flights on Monday, on top of the 900 Sunday cancellations as a result of the Atlanta outage.
But on the airport’s portal, swathes of flights from a range of airlines from Qantas to Virgin Atlantic were listed as cancelled with only a handful showing up as on time.
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