A lighting problem discovered during a routine afternoon inspection temporarily closed the runway at San Diego International Airport on Sunday afternoon, an airport spokesperson confirmed.
The issue, traced to “edge lighting” along the airport’s lone runway, had maintenance crews racing to make repairs before nightfall. They were able to fix the problem in about 35 minutes.
“We do daily routine checks of the runway lighting system and they came across something they didn’t like, so they had to close the runway in order to do repair work on the lighting system,” said Jonathan Heller, an airport representative.
The runway was closed about 3:30 p.m., Heller said, and was reopened about 4:05 p.m.
According to a statement made by the Federal Aviation Administration, the short outage delayed departures to San Diego by 40 minutes.