Power has been out for a while now, and as Atlantan Jeff Foxworthy would say, it's pandelerium down at Hartsfield. My sympathies to anybody flying out of ATL tonight or tomorrow.

I'm told a construction crew accidentally cut a main power line. Not taking any bets on whether said crew is affiliated with either the mayor or Atlanta city council, no sirree..

I love that word!

Inconvenient, to say the least.
My first time at Dulles airport was during a lengthy power outage. It was not at all fun, but then neither was the bomb scare the second time I was there. At least the threat of nuclear winter and global extinction helped put it all into perspective. Ah, 1980's memories!

And I thought it was just pandemonium.

But then again, I have an idea what "delirium" is. What's a "demonium"?

Ah, literary origins:
[www.dictionary.com]

Quote

Origin of pandemonium
1660-1670; after Pandaemonium, Milton's name in Paradise Lost for the capital of hell;
see pan-, demon, -ium

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Be seeing you.

From a friend who's down there:

"All the concourses are completely dark. It's like the walking dead down there. They are not allowing passengers to leave. There is no way out for the majority that are stuck here."

Complete and utter cluster down there. City (which owns and runs the airport) finally acknowledged there was a problem after five powerless hours, and is sending in the PD to "evacuate" the place.

I can't even imagine what it's like on the internal airport subway cars right now. What a fiasco.

So in brief, if you're flying out of Atlanta tomorrow (and probably through at least Wednesday), make alternate plans. Now.

Dang... no recharging stations, no credit cards, no ATMs.
I wonder if the toilet flushes are power assisted.

I bet Anker portable power banks are like gold bricks at this moment. Had one on my most recent trip to Florida.

....on the DL....??

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!

From a friend who flew back home to Atlanta today:

Landed at about 1:30pm. Sat on runway for about 3 HRs they tried to come up with a plan to disembark a ton of aircraft with no power. Got into terminal and it was like some post apocalyptic refugee camp. Only emergency lights, hardly any airport staff directing people. People just wandering around. We walked down escalator to the train tunnel to make our way out. There was a sea of refugees walking to baggage claim with no real hope of actual getting our bags.
In the tunnel was 1 airport guy trying to scream out directions.... crazy. The air circulation blowers must have been off cause the whole place smelled like exhaust fumes. Didn’t take long and I was getting a headache. I told [wife] we had to get upstairs and fresh air. And there were people just sitting down there.
No concessions were working. No escalator, elevators just a lot of people not knowing what to do. I thought well maybe we’ll get a free pass on parking. Nope. Only friggin thing working was the pay for parking kiosks. Those things had power.
Felt like they had no plan. Somebody better come up with a plan for next time.

thought well maybe we’ll get a free pass on parking. Nope. Only friggin thing working was the pay for parking kiosks. Those things had power.

unbelievable.

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space-time
thought well maybe we’ll get a free pass on parking. Nope. Only friggin thing working was the pay for parking kiosks. Those things had power.

unbelievable.

Quite believable. I got charged a full-day's rate in the daily parking lot when I lost my ticket picking someone up at the airport. Something like $36 for a half hour. This has cost the airport hundreds of dollars since, as we stopped using the airport's long-term lots and now park at an off-airport lot. I'm sure the airport still gets a cut from fees to allow the offsite parking shuttles in, but it's surely a lot less than what they lost from our changing our behavior.

It's run by a bureaucracy which has little interest in customer service, or in what makes a business successful. Remember, it's owned by the City of Atlanta.

Probably the main reason day-to-day things work reasonably well is that Delta and other airlines have a lot of influence. But the airlines can't make the airport plan, or, especially, be smart in dealing with a crisis. The airport doesn't have the kind of employees who can do that.


- W

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Be seeing you.

.....have a feeling this will become the norm.....may also be someone going through a 'run-thru' to see what happens......in this day and age why is there no back-up power......???

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!

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NewtonMP2100
.....have a feeling this will become the norm.....may also be someone going through a 'run-thru' to see what happens......in this day and age why is there no back-up power......???

The City of New Orleans government was in the same situation after Katrina. Unbelievable - I've known since I was a small child that N.O. could have catastrophic floods. Why no emergency center?

Probably because things which cost money, but aren't visible, are not very attractive to politicians, especially at the local level.

But when they get their heads handed to them, changes take place. But only then.


- W

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Be seeing you.

An airport like that probably uses more power than a township. You need lots of backup generators, with are unlikely to be ever needed.

I'm sure the control tower has back-up power. Just not anywhere else.

Just heard from my sister that her Delta flight home from a vacation in Florida has been cancelled and Wed is the earliest they can fly her home. It's going to take days to unwind this mess.

And in another thread, the flight of Delta's last 747 scheduled for Sunday had to be cancelled and rescheduled for Monday due to lack of crew. So it's likely that it's not just passengers that can't get to where they need to be on Delta, the crews are having problems too.

From reports I'm hearing, they did have backup generators. But an underground fire damaged at least the cables the generators would have used, and maybe the generators too. Same fire knocked out the main electric feed and the backup.


- W

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Be seeing you.

Nobody posted this? Come on...

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