Airliners Land at Washington Airport Without Help From Air Traffic Control

The tower operator may have fallen asleep.

Two pilots were met with the unsettling sound of radio silence when they requested permission to land their airliners at Washington’s Reagan National Airport early Wednesday. Operators of the two jets, carrying 165 people between them, had to take matters into their own hands and landed without guidance after circling the airport for 15 minutes. Between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m., the airport’s control tower is staffed by a single supervisor. Nobody responded to the pilots’ repeated attempts to make contact, leading some to suspect the controller was asleep at the controls. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has ordered that a second operator be placed on overnight duty.