The air traffic control tower at Martha’s Vineyard Airport was down for a day this week after a transformer that supplies its power was struck by lightning. 

The transformer was hit during Sunday’s squall, knocking out the electricity to the airport terminal and the tower, according to Geoff Freeman the airport director. The outage resulted in several Cape Air flights being cancelled and at least one charter flight being delayed. 

The terminal was able to get the lights back on because it has an emergency generator. But because the Federal Aviation Administration has declined to connect its tower to the airport generator, power could not be restored to air traffic control until the transformer was replaced, Mr. Freeman said in an interview Tuesday. 

“They have a battery backup for the radio frequencies,” he said. “That battery only lasts for so long so when that went down, that was it for them.” 

Eversource was called in to fix the transformer, but without a backup on the Island, a new one had to be shipped to the Vineyard. 

“It’s a 9000-pound unit so they had to get a crane to lift it up, move it, excavate around the bases...then put the new one on, rewire it and power everything back up,” Mr. Freeman said.

Power was restored to the tower by just before 7 p.m. on Monday, and things were running as normal on Tuesday. 

Mr. Freeman said the damage to the area could have been worse considering the lightning strike.

“It was pretty amazing,” he said. “Eversource did a great job being there the entire day, helping us out.” 

The air traffic control tower, which helps direct flights coming in and out of the airport, is manned by a third party company, and is open 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the winter. 

Mr. Freeman said there have been points in the past where the tower was forced to close due to weather or a car crash with a nearby telephone pole. To prevent the length of this closure in the future, Eversource also shipped a backup transformer to the Island, the airport director said.