Power restored at Reagan Airport

UPDATE:

Power has been restored at Reagan National Airport after an hour-long blackout that halted outgoing flights and security screening, but passengers should expect flight delays throughout the afternoon.

The cause of the outage, which began at 12:30 p.m. and was airport-wide, is still undetermined, said Courtney Mickalonis, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. It appears the outage was caused by a failure in airport's electrical substation

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground hold on departing flights, she said, but arriving planes were still able to land.

Dozens of flight cancellations are creating backups and delays throughout the airport.
"Anytime there's a disruption in service, for whatever reason, it will continue to disrupt flights for several hours," Mickalonis said. She advised passengers to call their airline to learn of any delays.

Security screening was briefly halted, but the Transportation Security Administration was able to use back-up generators. The outage caused the jet bridges that transport passengers to planes to lose power.

-- Lisa Rein