‘S**t show’: Update after airports hit with delays amid Telstra outage

Perth Airport has revealed what triggered chaos on Wednesday morning, with images showing hundreds of high-vis workers clogging the terminals.

The delays began in the early hours, just before a full day of flights out to regional West Australian mine sites.

It was initially believed the delays may have been linked to the nationwide Telstra outage that potentially impacted millions of Australians.

However, an airport spokesman said the operations were up and running on Wednesday, and the delays were not caused by the telco’s outage.

“Perth Airport is operating as normal,” a spokesman told NewsWire.

“The incident was caused by the unintentional activation of a break-glass alarm.”

They said two terminals at the airport were evacuated about 5am Wednesday, which led to delays for some customers.

Images posted online with just the caption “Sh*t show Perth Airport” show hundreds of people, if not thousands – mostly FIFO workers – in huge queues trying to get to departures gates.

The airport’s flight information shows dozens of early morning flights, mostly to mine sites, have been delayed by at least 90 minutes. Some flights were delayed almost three hours.

A Sydney Airport spokesman said nothing at its airport had been affected.

“At this stage, the airport is operating as normal,” the spokesman told NewsWire.

A spokesman for Melbourne Airport said the outage had no effect on its operations on Wednesday morning.

“We will keep monitoring across the day and provide updates where necessary,” the spokesman said.

A Queensland Airports Limited spokesman said the outage had not impacted Gold Coast, Townsville, Mount Isa and Longreach airports.