Services at an area of Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City were hobbled on Thursday morning by a power loss stemming from the switch to a standby electricity generator during maintenance.

The incident played out at the domestic terminal as the airport temporarily changed from the national grid to a back-up power source, a representative from the airdrome told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on the same day.

He added that the outage only lasted several minutes.

But the problem was noticed to actually occur from around 9:10 am to 9:20 am, resulting in snaking lines at the security section as the screening process was being slowed.

At about 9:22 am the electricity system of the domestic flight area returned to normal before another one-minute cut-off happened.

Check-in here was done without computers, and baggage conveyors, air-conditioners and escalators stopped working for a few minutes.

Check-in counters are seen at Tan Son Nhat International Airport, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, October 18, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre

People walk on escalators that are not working at Tan Son Nhat International Airport, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, October 18, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The outage apparently did not affect the operations of airlines to a large extent, although it caused their services to fall behind schedule.

In November 2014 the Tan Son Nhat, the country’s busiest airport, experienced a serious power failure over an hour that drew world media attention.

Multiple planes could not take off and many others had to reroute due to a radar blackout as the air traffic control center lost electricity.

The reason is that all three uninterruptible power supplies, or emergency power sources, failed in an incident unprecedented in Vietnam, Lai Xuan Thanh said in 2014 when he was the chairman of Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority.

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