GTAA Confident They Can Avoid Atlanta Airport Situation

It’s the stuff travel nightmares are made of – 1,173 cancelled flights, 207 delayed at the world’s busiest airport, all due to a massive, 11 hour power outage on Sunday at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International. So could it happen here and are we prepared for it?

TravelPulse Canada spoke with GTAA officials who are confident they can avoid such a crippling power outage at Toronto Pearson International Airport.

"Toronto Pearson is located within the service area of Alectra Utility and we maintain a very close working relationship with Alectra to make sure the airport has the best power supply possible," said Robin Smith, Senior Advisor, Communications for the Greater Toronto Airports Authority.

"Our power supply is spread between four power supplies, known as 'feeders', and the system is built so that all of the airport’s load can be accommodated by just two of these feeders, which is a rare occurrence. If the power grid becomes unstable, our system includes backup emergency generators within its facilities, as well as a natural gas fired power plant that can meet the airport’s power needs.

"Of course, a power interruption can be caused by a number of unexpected circumstances, some of which are out of our control and these redundancies are in place to protect against a single catastrophic equipment failure disabling power to the entire airport," Smith said.

Toronto Pearson International Airport is Canada’s largest airport and North America’s second busiest airport in terms of international passengers. More than 36 million passengers travelled through the airport, an increase of more than six per cent over 2016.