TAMPA, Fla. — Operations returned to normal on Thursday morning after a major power outage affected Tampa International Airport’s terminals, shuttles and rental car services. 

The outage was reported at 9:05 p.m., Wednesday, a very busy time for the airport as workers were trying to mitigate delays caused by storms earlier in the evening. 

Power was restored to all areas but two of the four airport terminals by midnight. Soon after, Airside A was restored, and finally, Airside F was restored around 2 a.m. During the outage, the affected terminals were run by generators. 

Ann Morin, who was in Tampa on vacation when the outage hit, says the people around her at the bar at the airport Marriott had never seen anything like it.

"All of a sudden, the power just went off and on," she said. "As quickly as it went off, it came back on again."

"Even the bartender is like, 'This has never happened before,'" she added.

During the outage, some planes were stuck on the tarmac waiting to deplane as only a couple of gates and jet bridges could operate at one time on generator power. 

Adam Bouchard, vice president of Operations for Tampa International, says they haven’t had an outage like this in recent memory. 

“What happened tonight is really unusual. It’s never happened at the airport that we know of,” he said. “We still don’t know what the cause was, TECO thinks it could have been more than one thing. But they have crews out here investigating making sure that power is stable and we believe at this point that it is.” 

On Thursday morning, a dozen flights were delayed but power has been restored to all areas and operations have returned to normal.