general

A power outage at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, the world's busiest, ground operations to a halt Sunday. The FAA ordered a ground stop on flights, meaning planes are held at their departure points, the airport said. Flight-tracking site Flight Aware said departing flights were delayed by more than an hour. Delta Air Lines is diverting some Atlanta-bound flights and expected delays as a result of the loss of power, a spokesman said. The airline is based in Atlanta and the airport is its main hub. Southwest Airlines cancelled the remainder of its flights to and from the Atlanta airport Sunday. It was not immediately clear what caused the outage, but Georgia Power and the airport said they were investigating. The tower is still functional but equipment in the terminals is not working, the FAA said. <br/>

German authorities said Friday that Berlin's new international airport would not open before 2020, 8 years behind schedule for a project that has become an enduring political scandal and national laughing stock. Planners said after a committee meeting they were confident they now had a viable roadmap to address the technical defects that have plagued in particular the ultramodern new main terminal of the BER airport. "With today's supervisory board meeting we are starting the last phase of the completion of the terminal and thus of the opening of BER," airport chief Engelbert Luetke Daldrup said. Daldrup called the new opening date target of Oct 2020 "credible and reliable" but acknowledged that the US$7.1b price tag would, as widely expected, continue to rise. <br/>