Fights landing and taking off at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport were canceled early Friday while a major power outage hit the Dutch capital, an airport spokeswoman told NBC News.
Power was restored after around 90 minutes but incoming flights were still being diverted elsewhere as of around 11:30 a.m. local time (6 a.m. ET), spokeswoman Danielle Timmer said. All departures were grounded after the blackout hit at 9:15 local time (4:15 a.m. ET), but Timmer said flights had started to leave the airport after the power came back.
"We are just trying to get business back to normal again and that may take a little while," she said.
Earlier, passengers posted images to social media showing parts of the airport in total darkness. Timmer told NBC News that during the blackout the airport was able to power some lights and other electronics using a generator, but that was not enough to allow planes to land or take off.
Despite power being restored at the airport and other parts of the country, large parts of North Holland province, with its population of more than 2.5 million, were still in the dark, according to the Netherlands' state-owned power company TenneT.
TenneT spokeswoman Ulrike Hörchens said the outage had originated at a substation in Diemen, a town within the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. "We have people at the site but we do not know exactly what caused this, we are still looking into it," she said. The national railroad service said no trains were running in and around Amsterdam, according to The Associated Press.
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- Alexander Smith
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
