Multiple Power Outages Grind United Airlines EWR Hub to a Halt

Passengers were left sitting on planes and waiting on delayed flights after power outages struck the airline’s operations tower at Newark Liberty Airport.

United Airlines operations at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) were brought to a near standstill for several hours on Monday evening beginning around 5 pm. A power outage at the airline’s operations tower reportedly prevented departing flights from pushing back from gates and eventually left arriving flights with nowhere to offload passengers.

The FAA told New York NBC affiliate WNBC that the “equipment failure” that led to delays of more than two hours affected United Airlines and United Airlines Express flights at the former Continental Airlines hub. Power was originally restored to the United Airlines tower after about 45 minutes, but the problem is said to have reoccurred a short time later, causing further delays and at least six canceled flights.

Delayed and stranded United Airlines passengers soon took to social media to express their frustration. Flyer Aaron Magness tweeted a photograph of the terminal from his window seat, noting “This has been my view for 2 hours as we’re stranded at Newark Airport due to power outage.” He later told his Twitter followers that the plane had to be refueled after idling for several hours at the terminal.

@FiOS1NewsNJ Airport tower (so it sounds like). We just had to turn off the engine to refuel since we've idled for so long. // @united

— Aaron Magness (@macknuttie) September 12, 2016

According to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the NYC area airport, the issue was resolved shortly after 7 pm Monday evening with no lingering power problems reported since. An unnamed source told News 4 that the power disruption was exacerbated when a backup generator at the operations tower failed to come online.

[Photo: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS]