Power has been restored at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport, after an outage on Sunday left tens of thousands of travellers stranded. More than 1,000 flights were grounded just days before the start of the Christmas travel rush.

All outgoing flights were halted, and arriving planes were held at point of departure. The airport said a fire had caused “extensive damage” to the complex’s electrical systems. Repair crews from Georgia Power managed to restore power to all areas after about 11 hours but the incident is expected to wreak havoc on the holiday travel plans of thousands.