Power was restored in Terminal 1 at Lindbergh Field after an outage left travelers in the dark Saturday night.
According to San Diego Airport Authority officials, power was restored at around 3:35 a.m. Sunday morning.
The outage first began around 6:30 p.m. Saturday night after officials say a high-voltage transformer was disrupted on the roof of the Terminal 1 building.
Half of the terminal went dark. Gates 3 through 10 were without power and airplanes scheduled to depart from Terminal 1 were temporarily not allowed to take off or land.
In all, airport officials said approximately 15 flights, both inbound and outbound, were delayed due to the power outage.
Southwest Airlines check-in counters were disabled.
Airplanes that landed when the power went off had to use roll-away stair. In some cases, luggage was handled manually, as some baggage claim areas were also left in the dark.
Other baggage carousels were functioning, and many passengers were still able to gather their belongings and get on their way.
For a short time, TSA officials were hand-screening passengers.
San Diego Gas & Electric officials were called to the scene to investigate the outage and said power would be restored by early Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, the power outage left many people waiting for relatives in the dark, including San Diego resident Sonja Forguson who said her loved one was flying in from Florida, all by himself, for the first time ever.
Many travelers said they were left, waiting, on inbound airplanes for up to 40 minutes before being allowed to disembark. Ground crews had to drive stairs to airplanes to allow passengers to get off the planes, and then walk into a dark terminal to get their luggage.
Baltimore resident Jenny Flynn and her family – including several children – were scheduled to fly to San Francisco, but were diverted to San Diego.
She said her family had no idea what was happening with their luggage or when they would be able to get to their final destination.
“It’s an unknown. They said it’s an unknown. So, we’ll find out – maybe,” she told NBC 7.
Kansas City resident Steve Platt, who’s visiting San Diego, was also left up in the air regarding his luggage.
“We’re sitting here waiting in a powerless airport for our luggage,” he lamented. “Not a lot of fun. Not a good way to come to San Diego, because we’d like to see some sights.”
On the other half of the terminal operations were running normally, with Alaska Airlines and United Airlines passengers flying out of the airport without a hitch.
U.S. & World
On Sunday morning, all operations at Terminal 1 were back to normal, Airport Authority officials confirmed.
