Power outage briefly halted flights to Miami, nearby airports: FAA

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration briefly halted flights at Miami International and nearby airports around 11:30 a.m. EDT (1530 GMT) on Thursday following a five-minute power outage at Miami's Terminal Radar Approach Control, a spokeswoman said.

Flight operations returned to normal after about 90 minutes, the FAA said. All systems resumed functioning with the help of a generator power, spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said in a statement.

The FAA said a problem "with an uninterruptible power system caused the power outage" and it was repaired this afternoon. The power was switched to backup engine generator power and began restoring air traffic control equipment after a five-minute power outage that ended at 11:29 a.m.

Planes in Miami, as well as those across the United States bound for the area, briefly could not depart, while those in the air were told to fly in a holding pattern until it was safe to land in South Florida.

Earlier, the agency said in an online advisory that pilots in the air could expect delays of up to 30 minutes. As of 1:25 p.m. EDT (1725 GMT), flight tracking website FlightAware.com showed 14 planes in Miami International and seven destined for the airport were delayed.

Bergen said the FAA was investigating the cause of the outage.

(Reporting by Timothy Ahmann and David Shepardson in Washington and Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler, Alan Crosby and Bernard Orr)

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