Darkened Runway Delays Flight for Half an Hour
A behind-schedule America West flight trying to land at the Palmdale Regional Airport was forced to circle above the desert for half an hour early Monday while a pilot tried to contact someone on the ground who could turn on the airport’s runway lights. It seems that personnel at the airport, including those in the control tower, had all gone home, thinking no more flights were coming in.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Carol Johns, one of 10 passengers on the flight from Las Vegas to Palmdale. “The pilot told us he was calling to get someone to turn on the runway lights and that we would have to wait until the lights came on.”
Eventually, the pilot contacted a control tower at an Air Force production facility that leases its runways to the airport in this city 60 miles north of Los Angeles. A security guard was dispatched to turn on the runway lights, and the propeller plane landed safely.
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