Power Outage Blamed On Fowl Foul

Tweetie Bird strikes again.

The blackout that affected about 100 flights at Los Angeles International Airport (CA) Monday appears to have been the work of a bird on a wire.

That's the word from LAX officials after power was completely cut to the airport's control tower and air traffic control center. A 34.5 kilovolt supply line simply stopped working for about ten seconds at 9:38 am PDT because a bird sitting on the wire touched some sort of grounded device or line. Although the line re-energized in seconds, it took hours to revive critical equipment downed by the outage.

At least, that appears to be the cause. "But we didn't find the bird on the ground, so it might have flown away," said airport spokeswoman Carol Tucker.

Travelers and crew members appeared to take the sudden blackout in stride. "Since 9-11 we've been accustomed to anything happening at the airport," said TV producer Mickey Ramos, who was waiting for a client delayed by the outage. "I'm always ready for longer lines, flights coming in later and gate changes. Anything goes at the airport."

Effects of the brief blackout were felt for about three hours, until the FAA was able to resume normal operations.

FMI: www.lawa.org/lax/laxframe.html