Dec 20, 2017 3 min read

Like candy canes, mistletoe and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” news stories about passengers being stranded somewhere trying to get home for the holidays have become tried-and-true seasonal staples. Every year, it seems, we see images of tired and frustrated families huddled in airports somewhere in the United States, their flights cashiered, usually by fearsome winter weather.

This past weekend, those scenes appeared on our television screens a few days early, but it wasn’t a ferocious Nor’easter or a blizzard in the Plains throwing people’s plans into disarray. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, one of the world’s busiest and a primary stopover and connecting point for many U.S. passengers, lost power for close to 11 hours. Hundreds of travelers were left to twiddle their thumbs in darkened terminals, and munch on whatever food they could scrounge from vendors.

Arriving passengers arguably had it even worse. They couldn’t get off their planes, so they were left on the runway for hours, as toilets overflowed and food, water and patience were depleted.

It’s the kind of scene you would expect to unfold in some dismal corner of the world where poverty is rife, the power is only on a few hours per day and a kleptocrat with a thing for sunglasses, epaulets and a palace for each day of the week is in charge. But this happened in Atlanta, one of America’s premier cities, the largest metropolitan area in the Deep South and, as recently as 21 years ago, a host of the Summer Olympics. It sends a troubling message about America’s battered infrastructure.

The power outage was apparently sparked by an electrical fire underneath the airport that knocked out both the main and backup power systems. Apparently, no other backup systems were available, and no emergency generators were on hand, unlike at most hospitals. It turns out Anthony Foxx, the U.S. secretary of transportation in President Obama’s second term, was on board an incoming flight, and he tweeted, “There is no excuse for lack of (a) workable redundant power source. NONE!”

Other observers pointed out how the fiasco did more than inconvenience travelers and nick the bottom line of the airlines. Writing for the Daily Beast website, aviation analyst Clive Irving argued it showed how airports remain vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

“If a terrorist wanted to wanted to find the most vulnerable point in America’s airport network they could not have hoped for a better guide than what just happened at Atlanta-Hartsfield-Jackson,” he wrote.

It arrives with less frequency than Santa Claus, but every four years the Society of Civil Engineers releases a report card on the U.S. infrastructure, and this year they gave it an overall grade of “D-plus.” The country’s aviation system received a “D,” with the engineers noting airports and air traffic control systems are “not keeping up” with advances in aircraft technology. The group also pointed out airports are becoming increasingly congested, and “it is expected that 24 of the top 30 major airports may experience ‘Thanksgiving-peak traffic volume’ at least one day every week.”

For a country that wants to maintain its economic preeminence, getting D’s on its infrastructure report card is not good enough. Making investments in our airports – and our roads, bridges, ports and railways – cannot be put off much longer.