Wow! Atlanta airport has been closed since about 1 this afternoon.
Our Atlanta kid departed at 9:35 this morning…whew!
Hoping others here don’t have travel plans out of Atlanta today!
We have a friend flying in from Belgium who was connecting via Atlanta…all international flights were diverted and we’re not quite sure where she is!
I don’t understand how this even happens. How does an airport lose power??
That settles it. Our Christmas movie this year is Die Hard 2.
Supposedly due to a fire in an underground power station. It doesn’t say much for resiliency, no backup power except for the control tower.
It scares me how fragile so much of our vital infrastructure is.
Our infrastructure has no resiliency… it is ripe for an EMP attack in any major conflict.
I saw it was a cut line from workmen but that was much earlier than what @TomSrOfBoston posted. As some people on the web commented, it seems strange to not have any generators or back ups for power and to have it all come thru one line. Fragile indeed. Glad we didn’t really look at flight for D that connect thru Atlanta - an option when flying Delta.
Been listening to the news updates. Apparently there was a fire in an underground electrical facility that spearhead to 2 substations before they could get it contained. The fire impacted the back-up/redundant systems. It took 2 hrs to contain the fire/assess the situation, but the underground tunnels had noxious/hazardous gas so they couldn’t let power employees in until it was safe to do so. Power is back on in the international concourse, which is about a mile from the main terminal. MARTA is running so people are taking trains out of the airport, and they are arranging to shuttle people to the GA world congress center to house them until the airport power is restored They are aiming for power to be restiored around midnight. I have a friend who has been stuck in a plane on the taxiway for about 7 hours.
@jym626 Still shows lack of contingency planning if a fire can knock out the backup system.
Hopefully when this is all fixed they will work to set up more back up/ redundant systems. But apparently the fire in the underground tunnel affected 2 substations. There are probably a lot of armchair quarterbacks now.
Passengers are slowly being deplaned with the roll-up stairs and taken from the tarmac to the terminal. Some are able to get to the rental car facility (guess they have power as they are also off site) and people are renting cars.
I hope they have gotten all the people out of the trains that take passengers between terminals. This is separate from the MARTA service.
Atlanta Constitution on the failed backup system.
http://www.myajc.com/news/local/atlanta-airport-power-outage-where-were-the-backups/spcKEsSRYjfE8sMwAsRXPI/
300 Delta flights so far cancelled for tomorrow. Some people being interviewed said they can’t get flights out for several days, and they can‘t get their luggage. Oh well… so much for hoping for a seating upgrade next weekend.
They were also doing a security sweep of the airport as they don’t yet know (or haven’t reported) the cause of the fire.
MY S’22 & D’25 were enroute LAX to ATL this morning when their flight had to be diverted to HOU because they could not land. The SW agents in HOU booked them on a flight to BHM Birmingham, 2 hours west of Atlanta and their dad had to drive from ATL to get them. They were supposed to land at 5PM EST and now should land in BHM at 9PM CST. Long day for them. I have two more flying to LAX to ATL on Tuesday, hopefully no issues flying in at that time.
Makes me glad we’re driving the 1200 miles to our son’s in SC! We’ll probably get there quicker than if we were flying!
Power restored around 11:45 last night. Everything is back up and running except the trains to the concourses. Long walk to some. Trains are supposed to be operational around 10 am. BUT— the airport is currently socked in by fog!
My daughter flew out yesterday from Atlanta, she missed her 11:00 and was able to get on the 12:40 - she just made out in the nick of time. I can’t imagine being stuck on one of the trams or out on a plane.
Reports indicate that the backup power system was immediately adjacent to the main power system. So if the main system burned, the backup burns.