Flights stopped at Washington, DC, area airport as unauthorized drone appears over runway

Al Drago/Getty Images/File

Flights at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were stopped for about 20 minutes on Wednesday night after two pilots spotted a drone flying over the active runway, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

“We saw, like, a drone or something that went flying by, probably halfway down the runway,” the pilot of an American Airlines regional jet, landing from Tulsa, radioed the control tower, according to audio captured by the app ATC.com .

“I saw a light that I thought might have been a drone too,” a charter pilot waiting to take off for New Jersey added.

The air traffic controller warned other pilots about the “unauthorized UAS (unmanned aerial system) activity reported in the vicinity of DCA, type and color unknown,” and flights were halted.

“It definitely wasn’t nothing,” he told the pilot who made the first report.

Airport operations workers searched for the drone, but did not find it.

Local and federal authorities were notified of the incident, the FAA said in a statement.

The FBI investigates illegal drone activity and federal charges can result in a year in jail and fines up to $100,000.

Unmanned aircraft are prohibited in much of the airspace around Washington, DC. Reagan National Airport is only a few miles from the White House, the Capitol and next door to the Pentagon.

The area around airports is also off limits for drones, due to the danger of colliding with aircraft with people onboard.

In January 2025, Reagan National Airport was the site of the deadliest aircraft accident in the United States in more than two decades when a manned US Army Blackhawk helicopter collided with an American Airlines regional jet. Sixty-seven people were killed.

In the resulting investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board later uncovered 15,214 “near miss events” at the airport between 2021 and 2024, where aircraft were within one nautical mile of each other, with a vertical separation of less than 400 feet.

The “overburdened” Reagan National Airport, which sits on a relatively small area of 860 acres, has long been one of the nation’s busiest airports, according to the Coalition to Protect America’s Regional Airports . Its main runway is the busiest in the country, with over 800 daily takeoffs and landings, according to the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority .

CNN’s Alexandra Skores and Pete Muntean contributed to this report.

Al Drago/Getty Images/文件

据美国联邦航空管理局称，周三晚间，两名飞行员发现一架无人机飞越正在使用的跑道，导致罗纳德·里根华盛顿国家机场的航班暂停约 20 分钟。

据 ATC.com 应用捕捉到的音频显示，一架从塔尔萨降落的美国航空公司支线喷气式飞机的飞行员通过无线电向控制塔报告说：“我们看到一个无人机之类的东西飞过，大概飞到了跑道的一半。”

“我看到一道光，我当时以为那也可能是无人机，”一位正等待起飞前往新泽西州的包机飞行员补充道。

空中交通管制员警告其他飞行员注意“在 DCA 附近报告的未经授权的无人机（无人驾驶航空系统）活动，类型和颜色不明”，航班随即停止。

“这绝对不是什么小事，”他告诉第一个报告此事的飞行员。

机场运营人员搜寻了无人机，但没有找到。

美国联邦航空管理局在一份声明中表示，已将这起事件通知了地方和联邦当局。

联邦调查局负责调查非法无人机活动，联邦指控可导致一年监禁和最高 10 万美元的罚款。

华盛顿特区周边大部分空域禁止无人机飞行。里根国家机场距离白宫、国会大厦仅几英里，毗邻五角大楼。

由于存在与载有乘客的飞机相撞的危险，机场周围区域也禁止无人机飞行。

2025年1月，里根国家机场发生美国二十多年来最严重的空难事故，一架美国陆军黑鹰直升机与一架美国航空公司支线喷气式飞机相撞，造成67人死亡。

在随后的调查中，美国国家运输安全委员会后来发现，2021 年至 2024 年间，该机场发生了 15214 起“险些相撞事件”，飞机之间的距离在一海里以内，垂直间隔不足 400 英尺。

据保护美国区域机场联盟称，占地仅860英亩的里根国家机场长期以来一直是美国最繁忙的机场之一，但其“超负荷运转”。据华盛顿都会机场管理局称，该机场的主跑道是全美最繁忙的跑道，每天起降航班超过800架次。

CNN的Alexandra Skores和Pete Muntean对本报道亦有贡献。