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[fearfulone]

L.A. Airport Outage Snarls Air Traffic

LOS ANGELES - A brief failure of a power line shut down electrical service to the Los Angeles International Airport tower and disrupted air traffic Monday morning, authorities said.
  
About 100 flights were affected, either having to hold in the air, circle or stay on the ground at their departure points for a time, Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) spokesman Donn Walker said.


Some departures from Los Angeles were also held but that was relatively quickly resolved, he said.


A 34.5 kilovolt supply line went out for 10 seconds at 9:38 a.m., city Department of Water and Power spokeswoman Carol Tucker said.


"The cause is blamed on equipment failure," she said.


Despite the immediate restoration of the power supply, the effect on the tower lasted longer.


All radar, radios and telephones — essentially everything that controllers use to communicate with aircraft and other control facilities — was hit by the outage, Walker said.


Shortly after 11 a.m., Walker reported that most power was back on but enough equipment remained out that instrument approaches would not be possible. Good weather made instrument approaches unnecessary, he said.

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