Transformer failure blamed for YYC outage that led to flight cancellations, delays

Calgary airport officials say a transformer failure was to blame for the hours-long outage Tuesday that led to several flight delays, with some travelers being stranded for up to 20 hours.

Chris Miles, vice president of operations and infrastructure for the Calgary Airport Authority, said the first signsomething had gone wrong came just before 1 p.m., when noises were heard in one of the electrical rooms in the international terminal.

"When we went down to that room about three minutes after the initial report, there was smoke in that room," Miles said.

Crews discovered that one of the transformers, which powers roughly a third of the international terminal, had failed. This downed the bagged system and led to issues with the terminal's IT room, where an attempted transfer also failed.

"I'd like to offer my apology to everyone who was in our terminal yesterday," Miles said. "We did have a failure across a couple of fronts."

The outage resulted in several flight delays and some cancellations, although officials were unable to supply the precise figures. On social media Tuesday, travelers reported sitting in airplanes on the tarmac for hours while crews addressed the various problems.

While the airport had its primary system up and running in less than two hours, the full system (including baggage) wasn't back online until after 9 p.m.

Some travelers told journalists gathered at the airport for a Wednesday press conference that they'd been stuck at YYC for more than 20 hours.

April Crane, a spokesperson for WestJet, one of the airlines most affected by the outage, said while the incident was out of the carrier's control, staff still worked diligently to get people on planes.

"We recognize that anyone who is cancelled or delayed, it is up to us to get people accommodated as quickly as possible," she said.

The cause of the transformer failure remains under investigation. Airport officials say that operations have since returned to mostly normal, although it's busy ahead of the holiday weekend.

Wednesday's press conference wasintended to focus on summer travel. The airport isexpecting to see roughly 18 million travelers this year, matchinga pre-pandemic record set in 2019.