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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."
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/...
That's the absolutely essential. Ideally though, they could also keep enough systems running to continue moving people through. That would be computer terminals, adequate emergency lighting, baggage handling, etc. While highly arguable, I suppose TSA would claim their scanners are essential for as well.
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...
It can be done pretty easily, it just costs money. Airports like Honolulu have on-site backup generation, but not sure what percentage of the load it covers— my guess would be about 65%.
For Atlanta the load should be around 35-40MW. 5-6 Turbines would cover it, but it would be about $20 million, and then you need to make sure your common points of failure with utility power are manageable, which would likely double the cost.
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.