Los Angeles airport thrown into darkness after power outage in terminals

Power was briefly knocked out at Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday, leaving many passengers at one of the world’s busiest airports in the dark and halting security checks, authorities said.

The airport tweeted at around 2:30 pm PT that some terminals, along with traffic lights and other systems, may have lost power, although it said the airfield was operating normally.

The Transportation Security Administration stopped screening passengers in most terminals, the airport said, and it urged people to allow extra time for security checks.

We are aware of an outage affecting LAX and our crews are responding. We will share more information as we gather it from the field. Thank you for your patience

— LADWP (@LADWP) February 1, 2023

The airport later tweeted that most terminals had lost electricity and added that some departing flights may have been affected because the jet bridges used to board passengers weren’t working.

The airport said most power was restored shortly after 3 pm.

“Our crews were able to make switches in the field to reroute power to LAX and restore service,” the city Department of Water and Power tweeted.

LAX OUTAGE UPDATE: Our crews were able to make switches in the field to reroute power to LAX and restore service. Cause of this ~50 minute outage is under investigation. LAX reports systems are coming back online. @flyLAXairport

— LADWP (@LADWP) February 1, 2023

It wasn’t immediately clear how many flights were affected but the LAX website showed that at least three dozen departing flights scheduled to take off during the outage period were delayed.

The cause of the outage wasn’t immediately clear.

According to Los Angeles World Airports, which operates LAX, it is the fourth-busiest airport in the world and second-busiest in the United States, based on number of passengers.