"It started off initially, I got a text that said the flight was 20 minutes delayed".

Inside the airport, the outage cut power in the terminals, leaving passengers stranded in the dark as they stood in line at gates and security checkpoints.

Hundreds of passengers that arrived at the airport on Sunday were not able to disembark, with some spending many hours onboard aircraft.

The city's response to the outage was complicated by the difficulties of fighting a fire that erupted in the electrical facilities that snake along tunnels deep beneath the airport.

Although firefighters responded to the fire shortly after it sparked around 12:45 p.m., it took about two hours to investigate and extinguish the blaze and hours more to clear the tunnels of noxious fumes, Reed said, before utility officials could inspect and begin to fix the damage. Their connecting flight was in Atlanta. The airport's two terminals are set up with electrical zones, "so that an electrical failure in one zone won't cause a failure in another", he said.

The blackout led the Federal Aviation Administration to declare a ground stop at the airport, preventing Atlanta-bound flights in other airports from taking off and causing inbound flights to be diverted. She says they just hope everything goes smoothly and they really make it home.

"It was like they were totally unprepared", said Jim Hollingsworth.

The 24-hour delay meant Dr. Raymond Brewer had to miss scheduled surgeries. Stores stopped serving food and passengers were evacuated to alleviate crowding.

Travelers stranded overnight in Atlanta arrived Monday at Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport, tired but relieved to finally be at their destination. "Four hours on the tarmac, coming from Louisville".

The nation's busiest airport is still trying to recover from a power outage that shut down operations. Everything was at a standstill on Sunday about 1 p.m., the same time Williams had arrived.

The retired Air Force member said the personnel who had no knowledge of the situation dispensed some bad information that made things worse.

"They had to bring these old rickety stairways out", she said. The Delta check-in process was organized and lines were moving, she wrote.

"Airlines did a great job letting travelers know ahead of time that flights were canceled", she said, noting that airlines have been working with affected customers, passing out travel vouchers and rescheduling flights since the chaos began on Sunday.

The flights canceled Sunday included one from Fort Wayne to Atlanta and three from Atlanta to Fort Wayne, Neild said. Almost 20 departures scheduled for Sunday afternoon and evening were canceled. Flights were grounded shortly after the airport lost electricity at 1 p.m. ET.