Airport Transporter Crashes at Dulles, Causing Injuries and Damage

More than a dozen people were hospitalized after a bus-like vehicle for passengers crashed into a dock at the Washington airport.

A mobile lounge carrying passengers crashed at Washington Dulles International Airport on Monday, injuring more than a dozen people and causing some damage to the terminal.

At around 4:30 p.m. Monday, a mobile lounge transporting passengers from Concourse D struck a dock at an angle as it was pulling up to the terminal, Crystal L. Nosal, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, said in a statement. She added that the airport was open and operating as normal Monday evening.

Passengers exited the mobile lounge using the stairs, and 18 people were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, Ms. Nosal said.

According to the airport’s website, Dulles has a fleet of 19 mobile lounges, which transport passengers between the terminal and Concourses A and D. One mobile lounge can carry 102 passengers. They were first introduced in 1959, when Dulles airport was under construction, as the system that would transport passengers around the airport. An article by The New York Times described the mobile lounge as “a bus, but not exactly.”

Air travel has been disrupted across the country in recent days, after the Trump administration announced that up to 10 percent of flights at 40 U.S. airports, including Dulles, would be cut because of the government shutdown. Thousands of flights have been canceled and delays have piled up, frustrating travelers.

In his Senate confirmation hearing this week for his nomination to the board of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, Trent Morse, a former White House staff member, said “the people mover is a relic of the past.”

“It’s an embarrassment that international travelers when visiting the capital of the most powerful nation in the world are transported back to the ’60s,” Mr. Morse said.

The mobile lounges have come under fire in the past.

A 2017 investigation by NBC4 Washington found that the mobile lounges, also called people movers, had been involved in at least 16 collisions or mishaps since 2007, including one fatal accident and others that caused injuries.

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