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Power Outage Strands Thousands at US Airport. 600 Flights Cancelled (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CNN:
A power outage at the world's busiest airport left thousands of passengers stranded in dark terminals and in planes sitting on the tarmac, amid a nationwide ground stop. Incoming and outgoing flights at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport were halted indefinitely as crews worked to restore power, leading to hundreds of flight delays and cancellations. Atlanta is the heart of the US air transport system, and what happens there has the potential to ripple through the country.
More than 600 flights to and from Atlanta have been canceled, including 350 departures, according to Flightradar24... Flights headed to Atlanta are being held on the ground at their departure airport. Inbound flights to Atlanta are being diverted, US Customs and Border Protection said. Departures from the airport are delayed because electronic equipment is not working in the terminals, the FAA said. The cause of the incident is under investigation.
Some people stranded in the dark terminals used their cellphones as flashlights, one passenger told CNN. "There were a few emergency lights on, but it was really dark -- felt totally apocalyptic."
More than 600 flights to and from Atlanta have been canceled, including 350 departures, according to Flightradar24... Flights headed to Atlanta are being held on the ground at their departure airport. Inbound flights to Atlanta are being diverted, US Customs and Border Protection said. Departures from the airport are delayed because electronic equipment is not working in the terminals, the FAA said. The cause of the incident is under investigation.
Some people stranded in the dark terminals used their cellphones as flashlights, one passenger told CNN. "There were a few emergency lights on, but it was really dark -- felt totally apocalyptic."
here were a few emergency lights on, but it was really dark -- felt totally apocalyptic
Time for zombie/infected flash mobs to uplift the mood!
Really?
All the times I've flown in the US, never have I been there.
Miami international, Minneapolis, Detroit, Fort Worth, Denver. Never Atlanta.
It seems odd than an airport is so unprepared for a power outage. I'd have thought they would have enough backup generators to run essential systems. As far as fuel goes, jet fuel would likely run in at least some diesel generators.
Sure you have to divide up the circuits so you can run essential systems, or go around and turn a bunch of stuff off. You'd need emergency lighting 24/7 at minimum and at least all the computers and security equipment.
Sure that level of redundancy is not cheap, but in a national emergency we need air travel to work. Whatever the issue is, it needs fixed.
If only they had a large number of mobile power plants they could just fly in...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
One less way for deplorable immigrants to get into our great country. But, donâ(TM)t forget to build that wall!
What happened to backup generators? You would think that such crucial infrastructure system would have backup generators to run important systems.
I am not surprised by this. Airlines and cities look at UPSes and generators as a cost center that don't bring in money, so let them wind up falling into disrepair, or not buying them in the first place. It isn't surprising this happens because there is little to no interest in disaster prep other than things terrorist based.
I live in a state that is often mocked for a flyover state. However, the state capital's airport has "n+1" generators, with both natural gas and diesel powered, so the airport can run indefinitely if the grid goes down for a while.
I'm far beyond being able to figure out whether these posts are made by genuinely crazy liberals or just people trying to make liberals look crazy.
yup. atlanta. mainly due to the hub-and-spoke structure of commercial airline routes. this is delta's primary hub for the eastern half of the country.
more passengers fly through atlanta than any other airport in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
and also busiest when measured by number if aircraft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And John McClain just tweeted that he's about to pick his wife up from the airport!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Atlanta is the heart of the US air transport system"
ORD, DIA, DFW, JFK, LAX would like a word...
Also, IAD, MIA, even SFO are probably closer to the heart then ATL
Donâ(TM)t worry about the Russians. Sarah Palin is keeping her eye on them from the safety of her home in Alaska.
...stopping a heist of gold bars being shipped through the airport. All he was doing was catching a flight home for the holidays.
While we're on the topic of timely and relevant jokes, do the one about Iraqi WMDs or Michael Dukakis' spelling.
$5 a passenger fee can fix that!
âoeAtlanta is the heart of the US air transport systemâ
Absolutely not.
I fly quite a lot for work, which is on the US east cost, and canâ(TM)t recall the last time I had to go through Atlanta.
Yes it sucks that this airport was down, especially for Delta, but itâ(TM)s hardly a crippling event for the US.
Let me know when JFK or Oâ(TM)Hare/Midway is out...
Well, you could google the worlds busiest airports to understand
or I could shit all over you by pointing out that you are apparently not a legit business traveler. Every legit business traveler knows Delta is the way to go and that means ATL, DTW or MSP in the US. Of the three ATL is by far the best, MSP is a distant second and DTW is to be avoided at all costs.
What Iâ(TM)m saying is, sorry you have to fly some non-delta bullshit airline and lol I was in ATL after a redeye yesterday and my wife took off from ATL around 11 this morning
that place is fucked right now holy shit
What are you even talking about, man? Are you drunk?
The key to it all and the redeeming thing about the 600 flights being cancelled is that we will now have that much less fossil fuel burned. We are talking about thousands of Olympic swimming pools full of Jet Fuel not burned. And in 10 years, who's going to remember this holiday season anyway?
They certainly have backup power for critical systems like air traffic but remember that an airport is basically a city. 275,000 people a day pass through that airport. The eleven different four-car trains there carry 200,000 people each day. The terminal is 6.8 million square feet. Just to keep some lights on so people don't panic requires a ton of backup power. Providing power for all the baggage handling, runway lights, and all other systems is a HUGE ask. Powering it during normal times likely takes damn near its own power plant. Running it on backup power would an insane requirement.
And to pile on, if you took out the central switchgear, you're screwed regardless of having generators. Offhand it appears they didn't think too much about redundancy or diversity when designing the airport's electrical system..... 'half the power is gone' would be a much less sensational headline!
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
DELTA hub...
"Duh, Everything Leaves Through Atlanta"
I had a sucky sig.
Sure stops air pollution - those airplanes do pump out a lot of garbage into the air.
Check out how many tons of fuel a Trans- Atlantic takes with a passenger plane.
Some folks with no love for the US have been experimenting lately. A recent incident involved corrupting some systems intended to prevent wide-scale power interruptions. One wonders if this was simply a proof-of-concept operation. One hopes this is thoroughly investigated. Not just written off as embarrassing.
What happened to backup generators?
Airport Guy: Backup generators? You mean a backup and generators? We had both, but we never tested the backup and the generators are dead.
" Michael Dukakis' spelling"
That was Dan Quayle
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
It's a payed troll tactic that I think is being automated somehow. It gives search engine bots an automatic excuse to burry "fake news" or "hate speech" when it detects key words. Three letter agencies and large corporations only need a few guys to start an outrageous rant like above, and it's faster than emailing Google to take it down. Slashdot WILL have to use a third partly like Disqus in a year or two.
Backup generators require maintenance as well. Especially if they are rarely used.
When I was in middle school we had a quick brownout. It was less than a second but it triggered the generators. They weren't needed and one got fried and caught fire.
Busier than JFK or LAX? Doubt it.
It shouldn't be this way.
too centralized and too much of the "all your eggs in 1 basket" issue.
For security of our whole air travel infrastructure they need to break it up into 4 smaller airports spread out more
Yet, I cannot help thinking about the wired article about power outages in Ukraine.
I hate to tell you this, but Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house - that was Tina Fey, acting as Sarah Palin, on Saturday Night Live.
It shouldn't be this way.
Someone should tell all the travelers that they need to arrive in the U.S. from some other direction.
nope
Slashdot is mainly white guys entering fox news age: it's getting noticeably more conservative over the years as new blood fails to come in.
Anyway, these near-copy-pastas are never serious. See Dr. Bob chiropractic for example.
Any confirmation Bruce Willis was seen in the area?
Or maybe this is a sign of things to come with the new Air Neutrality agreement...
Can we shutdown the interstates next?
they already do. JFK is the busiest airport in the u.s. for international passenger traffic. and the only one in the u.s. among the top 25 busiest (at number 19) worldwide by that metric.
That's largely because the USA's network is rather insular, and the majority of Delta's flights are to/from ATL. (There's essentially two check-in areas - "Delta" and "Other".)
it's not 'gateway to the USA', the way SFO, LAX, JFK, DFW, HNL or IAD are. Rather it's USA-to-USA interconnection, but most visitors to the USA arrive via a gateway airport and then go to where they're heading as those airports have enough connections inwards. ATL is mostly Delta and Delta is rather US centric, so chances are you didn't fly to the USA on Delta, which means you probably didn't go via ATL.
TL;DR: Delta focuses on Americans. ATL is Delta hub.
A backup system limits the common points of failure with the primary system. While there are plenty of airports with co-generation plants that can backfeed the primary utility circuits supporting the airport, this is generally not considered a backup system. (LAX has about 20MW of generation in their central plant, but IIRC it doesn't have black-start capability, as an example.)
Airports have the benefit of being big; generally, a properly designed system will maintain reduced operations under failure conditions. It won't eliminate an incident, but it can drastically reduce the impact of a major problem. You can sacrifice a concourse, but you limit the impact on other concourses so you can keep moving in the degraded state.
Maybe if we rebuilt our decrepit infrastructure we wouldn't have these problems.
the proper infrastructure to even operate ?
Seriously?
They never thought about a backup power scenario?
EVER? In 90 years?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
As opposed to partially apocalyptic.
a poc a lyp tic - adjective:
- describing or prophesying the complete destruction of the world.
That said, I was in the Atlanta airport at 4am once, many years ago, for a red-eye layover from LA to Norfolk and it was pretty quite and creepy.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Funny how people upgrade to being conservative as they get older and wiser.
He is even though no evidence has been released showing that. We all know it's true considering how much the media is talking about it.
Wrong. That is fake news. We know she said it since the media has attributed it to her so many times.
The power outage wasn't because of a brownout.
Baseline, as in base load, power is also a myth. Coal plants, as with most others, can be made to either throttle slowly or react quickly. There are self-starting power plants, and there are power plants that require grid power to start. All of this has been planned out.
The reason coal plants are dying is because of the stupid international commodity markets. The people that control the money are really enamored with how inexpensive natural gas is over the long run in comparison to coal and coal dust. This isn't SimCity.
I was stuck at Hartsfield for 11 hours last week thanks to the snowstorm that hit Atlanta.
The snow wasn't all that bad. The problem was that the planes had to be deiced before they could take off. Hartsfield only has 4 de-icing pads. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes to de-ice a regional jet, about an hour to de-ice one of the heavies. I was listening to ground control pretty much the entire time (thank you LiveATC app), and it was a mess. Pilots weren't responding to directions properly, creating an even bigger traffic jam. There was no clear order in which the planes were going to be de-iced, it was decided by the airlines based on priority of flight and the order wasnt always communicated to the ground control tower, so the ground controllers couldn't even line them up in the order they were going to be de-iced. This combined with the lack of speed to de-ice the planes led to a number of flights having to return to the gate in order to avoid tripping over the 3 hour rule. This also resulted in other flights not pushing back from the gates, since once they close that cabin door, the 3 hour countdown begins. Incoming flights were delayed or cancelled because there weren't gates open for their passengers, and since inbound flights were getting cancelled, outbound flights were as well since the planes that would be servicing those outbound flights were no longer inbound.
It became apparent to me that this wasn't a weather problem. It was a major inefficiency in airline operations. Yeah, I know, it's Georgia (I lived in the Atlanta metro area for over 2 decades) and it doesn't snow that often, but you'd think the busiest airport in the US would be better equipped to handle something like de-icing planes, especially given the ripple effect that disruptions at Hartsfield has on not just US transport, but globally as well. The international disruption isn't that bad, those flights can be diverted pretty easily, but domestic flight? There aren't any nearby airports that are even close to capable of handling the load that Hartsfield does.
And then today there's a major power outage that disrupts one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.
Maybe now they'll pay attention and revamp Hartsfield's operations so that it doesn't fuck everyone plans up.
That was my first thought. Then it occurred to me I don't recall hearing this ever happen before at an airport. Perhaps they have sufficient backup systems to handle any expected power outage, but those backup systems failed for whatever reason, or transitioning to them failed. I'm sure they've needed to switch to backup power before; we probably didn't hear about it because it switched over just fine in the past.
I've seen incidents where a web server had two independent backups that both failed. Good, redundant design can give you 99.999% uptime, but Murphys law is always awaits.
That makes sense then.
Puerto Rico has been without power for months.
Atlanta is so special that their rich people on a plane are more important than daily life for Puerto Ricans?
Utter first world problem.
If you think this story is more important than the Puerto Rico story, you might need some perspective and some time at church to get your caring and love back.
Use the backup systems every Sunday morning 3am - 4 am.
Every legit business traveler knows Delta is the way to go
So to test this I just randomly checked flights between two arbitrary US cities. Then another pair.
One pair, lots of direct flights, Delta nowhere near the cheapest. The other pair, all needed a change, Delta nowhere near the cheapest - and Delta's change wasn't in Atlanta.
I made sure one of the pair was on the East Coast each time.
So as a legitimate business traveller that prioritises direct flights and cost effective travel, why the fuck would I fly Delta?
Maybe you meant to say, "As a legitimate collector of Delta airmiles, irrespective of the cost to my employer"?
Read the timeline and the trending of the comments here.
It appears that the Hartford airport's life safety emergency systems required by the building codes worked. See NFPA 110 life safety code if you want details. However the life safety code only handles keeping the facility "safe" it does not keep it functioning.
While shutting down the airport complex is expensive, that needs to be compared with the investment needed for massive redundancy and / or emergency operations planning. Now that the event has occurred and the impact is on record, I anticipate Hartford airport will spend efforts to have an emergancy plan ready if a site power outage occurs again.
The electrical fire's intensity damaged two substations serving the airport, including the airport's "redundant system" that should have provided backup power, Reed said.
Am I the only one who finds it strange that two supposedly redundant systems are housed under the same roof, or at least so close together that both of them can be damaged by the same fire? At my last employer, we duplicated stuff that is far less critical over 2 buildings located at a good distance from each other...
A power outage at the world's busiest airport left thousands of passengers stranded in dark terminals and in planes sitting on the tarmac, amid a nationwide ground stop. Incoming and outgoing flights at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport were halted indefinitely as crews worked to restore power, leading to hundreds of flight delays and cancellations. Atlanta is the heart of the US air transport system, and what happens there has the potential to ripple through the country.
Have airports ever heard of something called a standby generator? Yes it would have to be a big one for an airport but it only really has to power operationally critical systems. If the starbucks is without power for a few hours, who cares? I have a hard time believing they cannot cost justify some sort of power redundancy to keep flight operations going for several hours at minimum.
Yes I read the bit about a substation being damaged. If a fire to a single substation screws up the backup power then it wasn't actually a backup. The entire point of a backup is to eliminate single points of failure. Backup power has to come from a physically independent source for anything larger than a UPS on a PC and the only common transmission should be the final few feet to the point of use in most cases.
Bet it started when some drunk said, "Hold my beer, watch this."
Maybe now they'll pay attention and revamp Hartsfield's operations so that it doesn't fuck everyone plans up.
That's mighty optimistic of you. I'm reasonably confident they will do a good approximation of absolutely nothing and have the exact same problem again in the future. I really try to avoid that particular airport as much as I can. I've flown through Atlanta Hartsfield quite a few times and the number of times I've gotten through that airport without some flight operations fiasco occurring might be 20-30% of the time. There always seems to be at least a minor delay and I've been stranded there overnight more than once. Maybe just my bad luck but it seems to happen way to consistently to just be me.
Atlanta is so special that their rich people on a plane are more important than daily life for Puerto Ricans?
Of course they aren't but let's be honest. Atlanta is one of the busiest airports in the world and interrupted flight operations there have literally global effects on our transportation network. Puerto Rico is a tragedy but of a completely different sort. Just because Puerto Rico is a sad situation doesn't mean we should overlook current news until that issue is fixed. This isn't an either/or scenario.
Utter first world problem.
Puerto Rico is literally a territory of the United States and so by definition is part of the First World. You are being quite condescending towards the people of Puerto Rico to pretend otherwise.
If you think this story is more important than the Puerto Rico story, you might need some perspective and some time at church to get your caring and love back.
Nobody was arguing it is more important. Methinks you are trolling.
Fairbanks has a population of 32,751. This airport sees more than 839% more people come through in a single day. The two aren't anywhere near comparable.
Then with that much commerce going on it should be trivial to justify the cost of a properly designed backup power system. Especially when you consider the full costs of a shutdown at such a major airport.
Referring to 40 MW as "backup power" is a bit ridiculous. That's a whole new powerplant right there.
What's your point? A major transportation hub like Atlanta easily does enough commerce to justify a standby power plant. Heck, power companies maintain these already for times of need. Wouldn't be hard to work out a deal to share the cost.
Anyway, it looks like there was a fire which not only cut power but also damaged some of the backup systems.
If one fire can damage the backup systems then they weren't really backup systems now were they?
I would hope the US ranks pretty low in global international travel. We only have 2 big countries bordering us and neither has a lot of air travel. Outside them, everyone is 5+ hours away by flight.
While Hong Kong, London, Shanghai, etc are centers of commerce with multiple countries within 2 hours of flight. In many parts of the world, you would cross multiple countries flying from one side of Texas to the other.
I've always read that Chicago's O'Hare is the busiest airport in the world. When did it change?
It changed back and forth a couple of years ago if you go by number of flights, but O'Hare lost its' No. 1 status way earlier than that if you go by number of passengers
Atlanta-Hatfield is not just a US airport. If things go bad there, that's likely to have a knock-on effect on the whole of the US, and on many intercontinental flights.
It's not really all eggs in one basket. There are several other airports in the US with similar numbers of flights, and even Delta has other hubs, .like Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Detroit, & NY, though its' headquarters and largest hub is Atlanta.
Will they have to file an official report and trigger an investigation?
Title 49 830.2
Incident means an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations.
They might squeak by without having to tell the story?
My first question would be whether the Georgia Power substation was using Triconex Safety Instrumented System (SIS) controllers.
See this post last week by FireEye, where an attack was made in a similar scenario.
From the post, "We have not attributed the incident to a threat actor, though we believe the activity is consistent with a nation state preparing for an attack."
I worked on a project where the backup generators passed weekly tests with flying colors, then failed under load during an actual power outage because they weekly tests didn't include a load bank.
Tomorrow's headline: "(insert state sponsor here) Hackers To Blame For Airport Power Outage"
lol...
From http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2012-12-06-01.aspx, we find this tidbit that gives you a sense of how crazy big the US airline market is, even given the lack of nearby international destinations...
By 2016, the top five countries for international travel measured by number of passengers will be the United States (at 223.1 million, an increase of 42.1 million), the United Kingdom (at 200.8 million, 32.8 million new passengers), Germany (at 172.9 million, +28.2 million), Spain (134.6 million, +21.6 million), and France (123.1 million, +23.4 million).
This ^ Of course some just don't have the cerebral capacity to move on from adolescence.
See subject: To whom it may concern - the freak I'm replying to has some dumb scheme in impersonating me folks - ignore him.
* He's just a butthurt fool that tried to "take me on" in tech stuff & lost badly to his public dismay is all - I've seen it before & it makes me LMAO!
(His "kind" brings it on themselves & this is their WEAK effete 'retaliation')
APK
P.S.=> You're a whackjob freak - no questions asked - this has to be the 10th time you've impersonated me this week alone...apk
Yeah, just like how they "upgrade" to baldness, obesity, impotence, higher blood pressure, Alzheimers, cancer, liver spots, incontinence, sagging skin, old man stink, nearsightedness, forgetfulness...
But those countries populations do not even add up to the US. Just their growth in international travel is 1/3 to 1/4 their population. But the comparison is not really proper. International airtime there is equivalent to domestic interstate travel here. Berlin to London is shorter than Atlanta to Dallas.