Washington's Reagan National Goes Dark

The airport was without power for long enough to create chaos.

Plane & Pilot

Thursday, August 16, 2018 at 09:50 AM ET

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Key Takeaways:

Reagan National Airport experienced a one-hour, airport-wide power outage on Wednesday night, causing delays for both incoming and outgoing flights.
The blackout disrupted terminal operations, leading to non-functional baggage carousels and escalators, and forcing businesses to close, though the control tower and airport lighting remained operational via backup power.
The power loss was attributed to non-hardware related issues experienced by an energy supplier.

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Washington D.C.’s Reagan National Airport had flights delayed both coming and going on Wednesday night after a total loss of power airport wide. The blackout, which hit around 10PM, lasted about an hour.

Because its systems can be powered by backup generators, the tower and airport lighting continued to operate throughout the outage, that otherwise caused havoc. The terminal had very little light, bags had to be delivered by hand after carousels stopped cold, passengers had to use the stairs instead of escalators (which essentially became stairs) and most businesses were forced to put commerce on hold.

The outage was blamed on a problem with an energy supplier, whom the airport authority said experienced some non-hardware related issues with the energy delivery.