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Shippers: Holiday packages not delayed by Atlanta airport outage

Ted Oster, senior manager at the Alpharetta FedEx shipping center, talks about the volume of packages and hard work that his employees perform while getting parcels out before the Christmas deadline. Ted estimates that over 350 million packages will be shipped through FedEx this holiday season. (Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
By Scott Trubey
Dec 18, 2017

The fire that knocked out power and shut down the world's busiest airport shouldn't delay holiday package deliveries, the nation's biggest shippers said Monday.

Tens of thousands of passengers were left stranded in Atlanta and elsewhere by Sunday’s power outage, but representatives for the U.S. Postal Service in Atlanta, UPS and FedEx said their operations were not disrupted by the closure of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017, photo, a UPS driver takes his truck on a delivery route, in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
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“UPS’s airline did not experience any delays from the airport’s power failure,” UPS spokesman Matthew O’Connor said. A FedEx spokeswoman, meanwhile, described the firm’s operations as “absolutely normal.”

Hartsfield-Jackson is the most heavily-traveled airport for passengers, but in terms of cargo, the airport didn’t rank in Airports Council International’s Top 20 air hubs.

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