Planes were being arranged in Shuangliu Airport in southwestern Sichuan Province to transport nearly 10,000 passengers stranded by a blackout Tuesday, an airport spokesman said.

A total of 148 domestic and international flights were delayed when the Shuangliu International Airport closed at noon due to a power outage, Zuo Chengquan, vice manager of the airport, told a press conference in the evening.

More than 2,000 passengers had boarded planes as of 6 p.m. and some 8,000 others were still waiting for departure, he said.

A switch caught fire in a transformer substation and cut off power supply to the whole network in the airport at about 10:14 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Sichuan branch of the State Grid, which detected abnormal voltage fluctuations via its monitoring system.

The branch said it immediately dispatched about 60 workers and more than 10 repairing vehicles to the substation, which is solely owned and maintained by the airport.

The airport was forced to close at 12:15 p.m. until power supply resumed at about 3:15 p.m., Zuo said.

Zuo said the airport was trying to ascertain the cause of the accident.

(Xinhua News Agency August 11, 2009)