ATL power failure
 

Anyone have the inside scoop? Reports I saw said a construction crew cut through the power cable. To which my first response was, "wait, the busiest airport in the world only has ONE power cable?" Seems our ability to implement a plan B is pretty weak lately. Acknowledging of course that it's on the airport not DL, but I still feel like we have a vested interest to know if there's such a vulnerability to our fortress hub as a single power source line. Gotta be more to this story...

Yes I could believe the Atlanta airport would have only one power cable. I could.

They were told weeks ago to replace the squirrel.

Somebody should check the small church just outside of the airport, something fishy is going on in there.

Probably just came unplugged at the MARTA station when they were putting up a Christmas/Kwanza tree.

But the Squirrel Union got the retirement age extended, and he kept passing his physical.....:D

The wife is stuck in ATL at the moment due to this. Unfortunately, many people are in the same shoes. She did say Delta is taking care of people as best as they could.


Cheers,

Enssayons

One cable. Yup.

But its a really big one. :)

Anyone else starting to see the value in a reliever airport NOT run by the clowns from the city of Atlanta?? (I mean good God..... Several backup generators were available-but apparently everything is routed through one box? Idiots!)

Not long ago, the trains all shut down for an afternoon because of a brake issue-and that was complete pandemonium..... And let's don't even think about what happens every single time one snowflake falls from the sky. Incompetence.

Mary Norwood now be like the happiest loser ever.

I’m fairly certain that the Delta IT guy responsible for the Aug ‘16 meltdown got fired.

And now apparently works for Georgia Power.

LOL, not sure if anyone else got that reference! :D

LOL you mean like the Boss Hogg "LaGuardia of the South" aka "Silver Comet Field" local yocal "field of dreams" stimulus airport that no one would fly to except Allegiant twice a week to Lakeland or something?

There's just no culture for redundancy or preparedness. That's the case at the government, corporate and individual levels. How can they go a month without a cancellation then suddenly what in all honesty is a minor snow event cancel 600-ish? Or a computer system trash everything for days? Or a single power cable do this? All while billions are literally thrown onto a zero return bonfire for sport because no one knows what to spend it on.

I have an idea.... let's buy back some more stock in an attempt to artificially boost the price🤓.... because 6$-8$ billion in profits per year couldn't possibly raise the share price on its own.

I’ve read several stories citing passengers being on aircraft for over 3 hours waiting to deplane. I wonder how the DOT 3 hour rule will be handled with this extenuating circumstance. Could be very costly if they enforce it to the letter of the law.

If you are familiar with the talent which runs that airport, it's a miracle the damned place doesn't burn to the ground at least twice a year.

Where was McClane on this one!?!?! Love me some obscure references!

Don't worry. The feds will waive the fines.

Just like every other time something happens to delta or southwest.

The clock stops once you request priority return to the gate under the DOT tarmac rule.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yippy ki yay mother f er

Is Billy Sherman in charge?

GF

I don’t think so..........but maybe Billy Carter???:)

(Yes I got your reference!)

Denny

Good news is DPJ was functioning just fine on the North side of ATL.

This is awesome.

LOL please. You really think there should be 5 figure fines per person times hundreds of AC for something like this? When the only theoretically possible way to avoid it would be to just stop, blow the slides and evac wherever you may be?

Tell us again how your airline is unfairly disadvantaged by legacy privilege.

Bloomberg reported it cost Delta $50 million. Ed wants GA power to pay.

This story states 25-30M. 11alive.com | Delta seeking to recoup up to $30 million from airport power outage

I don't know the specifics but I'd think this is a slippery slope. Are business travelers going to start suing airlines when we are late, they miss a meeting and as a result blow a multi-million dollar deal. How about that NFL charter that skidded (or taxied, can't remember) off the runway last year and the team blamed Delta for their subsequent loss. Are we going to be held monetarily responsible when that happens?

Probably not. Putting aside the NFL Charter (wayyyy too speculative to blame Delta for the loss), the businessman example falls under consequential or special damages. Generally, those type of damages have to be specifically identified and contracted for between the parties because they are really asking the breaching party to be an insurer as well. (Not only do I have to get you to your meeting but, if I fail to do so by xx:xx pm, I'm going to have to pay you $1 million dollars [insert pinky-point here] for my lost contract). Just not going to happen.

The ATL issue is interesting from a legal standpoint though. Not sure who actually contracts with Georgia Power and who has actual ownership of the faulty switching mechanism - City of Atlanta or Delta. Those are big factors as to who might pay. Makes for good press but I wouldn't be surprised if we see little to none of the $30m.

That's what I'm thinking. Make it abundantly clear in the media and to customers that [this one] wasn't due to our Apollo era IT system.

I was one of the ones trapped on a plane for 5 hours. Frankly, I think I had a better deal than the ones inside. The terminal we eventually made it into was the only one with any lights on, and after waiting on the tarmac for 5 hours I was suprised to find a crowd of people inside that still thought they were getting on a plane eventually.

IMO Delta employees did everything they could to help the situation. I was very unimpressed with the airport itself, however. The whole place needs practice in disaster response. No one knew what was going on, there was zero visible coordinated effort and a lot of various agencies present trying to solve the problem but unsure exactly what the master plan was. So as a result you had EMTs huddling around persons in wheelchairs, ATL police mostly just keeping the peace but with no answers, random personnel screaming to evacuate because of Fire Marshall orders and then more random airport personnel screaming don’t evacuate...as soon as I left the plane I knew my family was on its own and we had to make our own decision. We decided to leave and get a hotel-but thousands of people all trying to evacuate at the same time with minimal plan or direction is a beast in and of itself :-)

Those that were good at making plans on the fly or knew how to use technology to quickly book a hotel and find transportation like Uber benifited from those skills. It was interesting to see the normally very controlled environment devolve into basic human needs: food/water, shelter, transportation. The crowds were very unsure of what to do when all the personnel giving orders and direction suddenly stopped doing so.

Can you imagine if this happened in August and the AC just shut down? People would have lost it.

No kidding, we should all fly to Lagos for on site training.