Last nights Atlanta airport shutdown caused a huge disruption in travel to passengers throughout the USA as the ripple effect of a major hub closure effected major airline schedules in the hub and spoke system.
With an average of 275,000 passengers and 2,500 planes arriving and departing each day Hartsfield-Jackson serves around 104 million passengers a year and is the world's busiest airport, a record held since 1998.
Airports usually will have fast transfer backup generation for all the safety-critical functions like Air traffic control, navaids and runway lighting.
Terminal facilities however may not be on that system. Atlanta is a massive terminal complex drawing a huge amount of power from the local grid. Fire codes would require the buildings to be equipped with emergency lighting probably the only backup that exists in the terminals.
This event has obviously been at a single point of failure for the entire Atlanta airport complex and from the reports of a fire in an underground Georgia Power facility at the airport. Georgia Power staff then had to get in there to repair the equipment after the fire had been extinguished before power was restored, and it would seem that the one facility was the switch gear between standby power and grid power.
Under ideal design concepts each concourse should have at least some level of individual back-up minus major draw non essential items. The train system between concourses have a separate system, and of course no single point failure that can effect all of them.
As one of America’s major airline terminals, and Delta’s main headquarters (one of America’s largest airlines) it would seem that a big re-think/examination would be in order, for not only Atlanta, but some of the other major airports in the USA’s hub and spoke air travel system, some of whom are as old or older.
With an average of 275,000 passengers and 2,500 planes arriving and departing each day Hartsfield-Jackson serves around 104 million passengers a year and is the world's busiest airport, a record held since 1998.
Airports usually will have fast transfer backup generation for all the safety-critical functions like Air traffic control, navaids and runway lighting.
Terminal facilities however may not be on that system. Atlanta is a massive terminal complex drawing a huge amount of power from the local grid. Fire codes would require the buildings to be equipped with emergency lighting probably the only backup that exists in the terminals.
This event has obviously been at a single point of failure for the entire Atlanta airport complex and from the reports of a fire in an underground Georgia Power facility at the airport. Georgia Power staff then had to get in there to repair the equipment after the fire had been extinguished before power was restored, and it would seem that the one facility was the switch gear between standby power and grid power.
Under ideal design concepts each concourse should have at least some level of individual back-up minus major draw non essential items. The train system between concourses have a separate system, and of course no single point failure that can effect all of them.
As one of America’s major airline terminals, and Delta’s main headquarters (one of America’s largest airlines) it would seem that a big re-think/examination would be in order, for not only Atlanta, but some of the other major airports in the USA’s hub and spoke air travel system, some of whom are as old or older.
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