Washington-area airports were working to normalize operations today after an outage at the FAA’s Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center (ZDC) in Leesburg, Virginia, forced lengthy delays and traffic disruption throughout the region.
The center, considered one of the busiest in the nation with handling of high-altitude flights over a five-state region in the mid-Atlantic, ceased operations on Monday after fumes from construction work permeated the control room. Local fire officials directed the FAA to evacuate the center at about 6:40 p.m., the FAA said. As a result, the facility stopped accepting new flights and handed off airborne flights to other ATC facilities during the evacuation.
NBAA issued alerts to operators, forwarding information from the FAA that customers departing in ZDC airspace would be capped at tower en route altitudes until outside ZDC airspace and arrivals would be directed to descend to the lower tower en route altitudes before hitting the boundary of ZDC.
Controllers resumed operations at about 9:30 p.m., but hundreds of flights were delayed or disrupted in the intervening time. The delays continued into today.