4-hour outage snarls traffic at Hartsfield-Jackson

A widespread power outage that affected traffic in and out of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport Tuesday night was repaired shortly after 10 p.m. tonight.

The four-hour blackout resulted in major traffic backups on the surrounding highways and access roads, apparently causing many holiday travelers to miss their flights.

The outage shut down entrances to the North and South parking decks, causing massive tie-ups.

“You have to assume most of the people who came in [during the outage] missed their flights,” airport spokesman John Kennedy said.

With the Thanksgiving holiday approaching, airport traffic was much heavier than typical for a weeknight. About 1.5 million people are expected to fly out of Hartsfield over the Thanksgiving holiday period.

AirTran Airways had two banks of 30 flights scheduled to depart at 8 p.m. and again at 10 p.m. Although the airline held the flights about a half-hour to accommodate many late arrivals about 30 passengers failed to make their flights, according to Tad Hutcheson, vice president of marketing for AirTran. Arrangements were being made to take them on flights leaving Wednesday.

A spokesman for Delta Airlines said they had no reports of passengers missing flights.

The outages were reported about 6:15 p.m. Georgia Power officials believe a faulty underground cable was to blame, said spokesman John Kraft.

Because of the holdover traffic from the afternoon rush hour, repair teams were delayed in responding to the problem, Kraft said.

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