Post-Thanksgiving travel in the Philadelphia region: Another power outage at PHL and a SEPTA rate hike

Hundreds of thousands of local travelers took to the roadways, railways, and skies on Sunday, making their annual treks home from Thanksgiving celebrations.

And by and large, they were given even more to be thankful for: no major delays and a sunny, albeit bone-chillingly brisk, day across the region.

But at Philadelphia International Airport, the second power outage in as many days struck Terminal D, lasting from about 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., resulting in delays to 24 flights but no cancellations, said PHL spokesperson Heather Redfern.

The outage occurred when the large generator used Saturday to resolve that outage, which delayed dozens of flights, stopped working, Redfern said. Another generator was brought in to resolve Sunday afternoon’s outage, she said.

Sunday was projected to be the airport’s busiest day of the Thanksgiving travel period, with more than 99,000 passengers expected to pass through it by day’s end, Redfern said.

The vast majority of those travelers were departing and arriving on time.

Of hundreds of departures and arrivals, 139 had been delayed Sunday, Redfern said. Three had been canceled between PHL and Watertown, N.Y., which was among the towns in western New York and Pennsylvania to be buried under lake-effect snow this weekend.

While feet of snow was snarling traffic in the Great Lakes region and making travel nearly impossible in places like Erie County, it was largely smooth sailing on the roads and rails closer to Philly.

One startling exception was a Sunday morning shooting in the parking lot of the Biden Welcome Center on I-95 in Newark, Del. A 45-year-old motorist from Goshen, N.Y., who had stopped at the service station around 7 a.m., was robbed and shot, Delaware State Police said. As of Sunday night, police did not know how many suspects were involved. The victim was taken to an area hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

Neither the Pennsylvania Turnpike nor the Pennsylvania State Police had any major incidents to report as of early afternoon.

About 530,000 motorists were projected to use the turnpike on Sunday alone, spokesperson Marissa Orbanek said, with the heaviest travel time being between noon and 4 p.m. AAA had estimated that 90% of Philadelphia travelers, about 872,000 people, would travel by car to their Thanksgiving destinations.

Amtrak had not reported any major delays impacting Philadelphia trains as of midafternoon, and SEPTA was having a “normal service day,” said spokesperson Andrew Busch, noting that the agency doesn’t normally see a post-Thanksgiving surge. On a typical Sunday, its subways, trains, and buses record about 350,000 to 400,000 passenger trips, half the number they usually log on a weekday.

While nothing was out of the ordinary in terms of SEPTA operations, its passengers saw something they hadn’t experienced in seven years: higher fares.

The agency’s 7.5% hike went into effect on Sunday, bringing the cost of a bus, subway, or trolley ride purchased via a passenger’s digital Travel Wallet to $2.50, the same price they’d pay if they used cash. Most single-trip Regional Rail fares also increased.

Riders were spared an additional fare hike of 21.5% starting Jan. 1. Last month, Gov. Josh Shapiro redirected $153 million in federal highway funds to the transit agency, saving its customers from seeing massive far hikes until at least the summer.

At Philadelphia International Airport, investigators were still trying to figure out what caused the 16½-hour power outage that began Friday night and ended Saturday afternoon.

In total, about 70 flights were delayed as a result of the incident, Redfern said. None were canceled.

Kyle and Christine Hanson were among the passengers on one of those delayed flights Saturday.

They had been scheduled to arrive in Philadelphia shortly before noon Saturday, after nearly 12 hours of travel from their home near Portland, Ore., including a long middle-of-the-night layover in Detroit.

The couple traveled to Philadelphia on business for Christine Hanson, a 39-year-old project manager, and to attend the PAX Unplugged board game convention in the city next weekend.

After a delay getting on the plane in Detroit, the Hansons’ Delta Airlines flight sat on the tarmac for two hours in Philadelphia, waiting to deplane.

“You could feel the whole plane just deflate as the captain came on and was like ‘Sorry, we can’t get the jetway to turn on. They are trying to reboot it,’” said Kyle Hanson, 39, who works in IT.

“Everyone would hold their breath whenever the loudspeaker would turn on,” Hanson added. Among fellow passengers, “there was a lot of chatter of like, ‘I can see a door. Why can we not just pull up some stairs?’ It was reaching that point of ‘Can we do anything to get us off this plane?’”

Staff writer Michelle Myers contributed to this article.