Power outage at Los Angeles International Airport led to travel disruption

Thursday, June 6, 2019

A power outage at Los Angeles International Airport led to travel disruption on Wednesday night as several flights were diverted, delayed or cancelled. Hundreds of passengers were briefly stuck on grounded aircraft.

As per the airport, a 2-second power ‘bump’ shortly after 6 p.m. caused the entire airport to go dark. Electrical generators kicked in and all but three terminals had power within an hour. Power was finally restored to Terminals 1, 7 and 8 three hours or more later. The airport’s signature colored pylons were also dark.

Southwest Airlines diverted or cancelled about 40 flights resuming its normal schedule from Thursday morning. United Airlines said it delayed 19 flights, cancelled two and diverted nine.

Since electrically-powered jet bridges weren’t working, hundreds of people were briefly stuck on planes on the tarmac until portable stairs were brought in to deplane them.

Check-in was scrambled by the outage. It affected everything from parking structures to cash registers at airport restaurants. A lot of the electrical times like TSA screening, conveyor belts, everything had to be turned off and on. The delay in resuming power came from switching back from emergency power to the regular supply from the city’s Department of Water and Power.

Equipment had to be “rebooted” and checked to make sure it was working properly.

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