Amsterdam Power Outage Hits Flights At Schiphol Airport, Public Transport

Several flights to and from Amsterdam's Schiphol airport were delayed after a major power outage hit large areas of the Dutch capital and surrounding towns in the province of North Holland on Friday morning. Although power has since been restored to the airport, large parts of the country are still suffering from blackouts, according to media reports.

Public transport across the Netherlands has been affected, with trains cancelled and passengers stuck in lifts, trams and subways. Schiphol -- Europe’s fourth-largest airport -- was switched to backup power for more than an hour, and flights were cancelled or diverted to other regional airports. The diversions are still in place, according to media reports.

Over an hour after the blackout, TenneT, the Dutch grid operator, said that power had been restored to some parts of the densely populated North Holland province, which is home to about 2.7 million people, Reuters reported. In a tweet, the company said that the outage was caused by a “technical fault” at a substation in the Amsterdam suburb of Diemen and that it was working toward resolving the issue.

“Once we know the cause, we will be able to say how long it will take to get power supplies back on line,” a spokesman for the company reportedly said.