Not long after a false missile strike alarm rocked Hawaii on Saturday, pilots and controllers at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport at Honolulu had to deal with the closure of one of the main runways because there was a dead body on it. Authorities closed Runway 26L for more than six hours as they gathered evidence about how the body got there. Runway 26L is known as the reef runway and at this time of year is used by widebody aircraft to keep their approach over the water. They were shifted to 26R, which required them to maneuver over the city.
Officials still haven’t released the identity of the person found on the runway or how he or she got there but the shift in operations did cause a few aircraft to go around. No significant delays were reported. The body was spotted by the crew of an aircraft just after noon and the runway was closed minutes later. The incident happened about four hours after Hawaii’s emergency broadcast system sent out a false alarm over an imminent nuclear missile attack on the state. The false alarm was attributed to human error.
