NEW YORK (PIX11) — JFK Airport’s Terminal 1 remains closed on Friday, as the power failure at the high-traffic airport ensues.
The power outage began on Thursday when an electrical panel failure sparked a small fire that was quickly extinguished, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Thousands of flights were disrupted, leading to international travel chaos. Airlines had to resort to writing flight status updates by hand, on whiteboards, while a few worked to rebook flights.
Many of the flights en route to JFK had to be diverted or turned around, including a 16-hour flight from New Zealand to nowhere. Passengers on Air New Zealand were seven hours in before they turned back to Auckland.
While many travelers were outraged by the outage, others were grateful to be rebooked through a limited number of computers and through other terminals.
“We travel a lot you kinda have to roll with it. You can either get comfortable here or since I have some friends here I’ll probably just stay,” a pair of travelers told PIX11 News.
