Issues with a communications system caused flight delays and redirections Sunday across the D.C. area, including all the way to Richmond, Virginia, and Baltimore, Maryland. The problem left passengers stuck for hours and looking for other options to get home.
“How could you not be frustrated?” one passenger asked.
"Stressful and a hot mess to be honest," another passenger said. “They didn’t tell us anything until midnight, pretty much, that they weren’t going to fly us out."
The FAA said in a tweet about 6:30 p.m. Sunday that it had paused departures to D.C.-area airports – including Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) and Richmond International Airport (RIC)– while repairs to a communications system were made at Potomac Terminal Radar Approach Control facility. A temperature reading found one of the power cables was too hot and needed replacement.
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A backup system handled communications while a communications power panel at a Virginia facility was repaired, the FAA said. Flights from the West Coast, midwest and Florida bound for D.C.-area airports resumed about 6:45 p.m. All other flights resumed at around 7 p.m.
The ground stop had "nothing to with any of the facilities at our airports," the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) said.
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Between Sunday and Monday afternoons, Reagan National Airport reported 113 flight cancellations and Dulles reported another 44, according to Flight Aware. Both airports told passengers to check with their airlines for information about their travel plans.
Hours after the ground stop was lifted, some travelers Monday morning told News4 they were still stuck.
Erin Masters says she was trying to make it back to D.C. from Orlando Sunday evening after a family vacation cruise. Out of 16 family members, six were stuck in the airport for 13 hours, she said.
“My mom had become ill, and we were trying to get her back to get her to the doctor,” she said. “We all tried rebooking, and of course the earliest flight that they could get us out was not until Tuesday morning.”
One person spent the night at Reagan National Airport after his flight was delayed and then canceled.
“They put me on a flight for this morning, so I spent the whole night here. Then, that was canceled,” said Louis Diaz, who was traveling to South America.
Kimberly Snyder said she was supposed to leave from BWI, but her flight was canceled, and she wouldn’t be able to make it home to Grand Rapids, Michigan, unless she got a late flight out of Reagan National Airport.
“I was going to leave from one airport, and in transit; they changed me to another one and I changed to another one and I don’t even know what state I’m in right now,” Snyder said. “They were asking if there was any alternate way I could get home.”
It was not yet known what caused the trouble with the communications system. The FAA said there were no reports of a fire.
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