Burbank airport grounds flights

BOB HOPE AIRPORT ? The Bob Hope Airport halted all inbound and outbound flights for two hours on Tuesday after air traffic radar problems at a regional control tower in Palmdale disrupted flight patterns at several Southern California airports.

At about 6 p.m., airport officials learned of a power outage at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale, a facility that monitors planes traveling outside the radar screens of individual airports, Operations Supervisor Tom Janowitz said.

As a result, all Burbank flights were grounded until 8 p.m., after power was restored at the Palmdale facility, and when airport resumed limited flight service, airport spokesman Victor Gill said.

Operations at Los Angeles International Airport, the Long Beach Airport, John Wayne Airport and the San Diego International Airport were also disrupted as a result of the Palmdale outage, Janowitz said.

Airborne flights heading to Burbank during the delay were either turned back to their point of origin or rerouted to nearby airports not affected by the outage, Janowitz said.

There were reports that a Southern California Edison vehicle hit a power pole in Palmdale just after 4 p.m., causing a power glitch that forced the control tower's back-up generator, which later failed, to kick in. But FAA officials reportedly could not confirm that the generator failed.

Passengers on the ground experienced delays and confusion as a result of the disruption.

"We literally switched gates four times," said Erica Norris, 23, whose 5:55 p.m. to Las Vegas was delayed. "It was a huge mess. When we called customer service they didn't even know what was going on."

Norris tried unsuccessfully to book a hotel room in Burbank, opting to rent a car and drive back to Las Vegas.

Jason Haxton, 36, was stranded in the airport with his band "Strictly for Kicks," which rushed to Burbank early Monday morning from Sacramento to interview for the NBC show "Star Tomorrow."

"We put everything aside to get here this morning," he said. "We're wondering what our bosses are going to say when we say, 'I'm sorry I can't come in because the radar was down in Burbank,'" he said.