A power outage affected the Atlanta Airport, one of the most frequented in the world, for over 11 hours, this caused hundreds of cancelled and rerouted flights and thousands of passengers stranded.

In a time of the year when the number of passenger increases considerably the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport suffered an electrical failure at around 1 p.m. Sunday, December 17. The service was reestablished after midnight this Monday.

“Georgia Power believes the issue may have involved a fire which caused extensive damage in a Georgia Power underground electrical facility (…) Georgia Power has many redundant systems in place to ensure reliability for the Airport and its millions of travelers-power outages affecting the Airport are very rare”… explained a press release yesterday.

According to the Atlanta Airport social media, the power was restored at 12 a.m. , concessionaires opening; TSA security lines open. Passengers are urged to check airlines for flight info, since currently 80% of the flights that were scheduled are delayed.

Glenda Umaña a renown Costa Rican journalist and formed anchor in CNN in Spanish, shared through her Facebook that she was one of the affected travelers, since she was heading from Atlanta, where she currently resides, to Costa Rica; her flight was rescheduled for Thursday. “This is nothing compared to what other passengers had to suffer, evacuating the airport yesterday and trying to get a hotel and a place to eat”, read Umaña’s post.

Another traveler, Mike Vizdos, explained to site 24matins.es that the passengers in his flight which was arriving to Atlanta from Costa Rica had to stay inside the plane for six hours, since the incident occurred just as the plane landed.

If you had a schedule flight going from Costa Rica to or through Atlanta this week please contact your airline to reconfirm your itinerary.