Originally Posted by
ingleburg5
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure they tell you the airport is closed because the tower lost power. Your technical interview is not the time to be cute with technicalities. Play the game and move on. Anyway, what if Airport Fire and Rescue lost some of their ability to be notified of an accident/incident because of the power outage in the tower. Not a great idea to land there when there are plenty of other better options available.
Sorry, but a closed tower does not close the airport. As previously stated, it just becomes an uncontrolled airport. Now, there may be other complications, but you can still land--if you don't hit something.
For a very long time, both Lihue and Kona towers closed before the late night flights back to the mainland. You just had to get your IFR clearance from center before you departed, and of course use non-tower traffic advisories.
Long ago story, in the traffic pattern at Travis on a weekend. The tower was going to close for maintenance. We had a scheduled 4 hr. local in a 141. Approach control tried to control the VFR traffic pattern from a room with no windows. We pretty much told him to be quiet and let us fly. They did not like it, but they weren't in charge and had no authority. The pilots become the authority to determine the landing runway as well.