Washington’s Reagan National Airport Control Tower Goes Silent

Talk about an uneasy landing: The control tower at Reagan National Airport went silent Wednesday, forcing the crews of two planes carrying 165 passengers total to land without any help. The two planes were communicating with controllers at a separate facility in the region that doesn’t handle landings, but the pilots of both planes had to take matters into their own hands. The incident is the second time in two years the control tower at Reagan National has gone silent for a period of time, a source said. At midnight, there is only one person on duty—which caused an incident last year in which the controller got locked out of the tower. The Federal Aviation Authority is investigating this latest incident.