(Apologies if this has already been posted.)

Nando Times

SYDNEY, Australia (August 1, 2000 12:48 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com)

- Sydney Airport's control tower suffered its second power failure in less than a month Tuesday, leaving aircraft grounded for an hour.

The outage comes in the run-up to Olympic Games, which begin Sept. 15 in Sydney.

Electricity to the control tower failed at about 7:50 a.m., airport spokesman Eric Aubert said. Although a backup system kicked in immediately, no flights left for an hour, he said. Power was restored at 8:50 a.m.

The delay created a backlog of 15 domestic and seven international flights. Aubert said passengers faced delays of up to an hour.

Richard Dudley, a spokesman for Airservices Australia, said the airport's quick response to the power failure that showed aviation authorities were ready for the Olympics.

"All agencies within (the) airport are working very hard to get any glitches out of the system as quickly as possible," he said. "We are very confident of our role during the Olympics."

On July 6, a blackout at the airport briefly shut down radar and cut communications between air traffic controllers and planes. A computer glitch caused a two-minute blackout, and computer systems took 10 more minutes to reboot, forcing pilots to put their planes in holding patterns.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), August 05, 2000