At least 18 passengers were injured when a transport vehicle slammed into a dock at a Washington DC area airport on Monday.
The Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority confirmed to WTOP that a mobile lounge – or ‘people mover’ – which are used to board and offload international passengers from an aircraft struck Concourse D at Dulles International Airport ‘at an angle’ as it was pulling up to the building at around 4.30pm.
Passengers then got off the people-mover using the stairs and were evacuated by the airport’s medical personnel.
Eighteen people were transported to a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries in the aftermath, officials announced.
It remains unclear how the accident occurred or whether there was any structural damage to airport property.
But authorities say the airport remains open and operational.
It is equipped with 19 mobile lounges that were built in the 1960s, according to its website.
Each is 54 feet long and 16 feet wide, and can carry up to 102 passengers, though only about 50 people were onboard the vehicle at the time, according to the Washington Examiner.
They are used to ferry passengers across the airport and bring some international travelers directly to customs and immigration.
The crash comes just days after Trent Morse, a former White House staffer, decried the mobile lounges during his Senate confirmation hearing for his nomination to the board at the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority.
He called them a ‘relic of the past,’ according to The New York Times.
‘It’s an embarrassment that international travelers, when visiting the capital of the most powerful nation int he world, are transported back to the ’60s,’ he said.
The vehicles are no longer being built and refurbishments on the mobile lounges cost about $8 million a piece, according to View From the Wing.
The people-movers also came under scrutiny in 2017, when an investigation by NBC4 Washington found they had been involved in at least 16 collisions or mishaps since 2017 – including one fatal accident and others that caused injuries.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
