Lighting Outage Grounds Burbank Airport Flights

Crews at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank this morning finally corrected a runway lighting failure that had prompted numerous outbound flights to be canceled and a number of inbound flights to be diverted.

"The lights were restored at 5:30 a.m.," an airport operations dispatcher said.

Airport spokesman Victor Gill said he could not immediately spell out the cause of the outage. "But I can tell you that the problem involved multiple burnouts through the entire circuit. The problem just didn't involve one spot," he said.

The "edge lighting system" outage began Thursday night was on the airport's north-to-south runway 15-33, which is primarily used for departures, Gill said.

Many airlines, including Jet Blue, Alaska, Southwest and United, canceled most of their outbound flights, he said.

The runway handling arriving flights continued operating, but full gates caused some inbound flights to be diverted, according to an operations employee.

The total number of flights affected was not reported.