Airspace over El Paso, Texas, closed 10 days by FAA for 'special security reasons'

El Paso International Airport cameras are still live

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AP News: Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes El Paso, urged the FAA to lift the restrictions in a statement Wednesday morning. There was no advance notice given to her office, the city of El Paso or airport operations, she said.

“The highly consequential decision by FAA to shut down the El Paso Airport for 10 days is unprecedented and has resulted in significant concern within the community,” Escobar said. “From what my office and I have been able to gather overnight and early this morning there is no immediate threat to the community or surrounding areas.”

8:31 EST: A second airspace in Santa Teresa, NM has now been closed. It is located 15 mi to the northwest of El Paso

8:47: When asked if the ban was related to U.S. military operations, the Pentagon referred comment to the FAA in an email.

8:51: El Paso borders Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez

Ciudad Juárez is home to about 1.5 million people. Like many border-spanning communities, some residents are accustomed to using facilities like airports on both sides of the border, depending on where they are traveling.

The city exploded in size in recent decades as free trade agreements spurred a boom in assembly plants that offer less-expensive labor and the advantage of easy access to the U.S. market. Nearly 97% of the goods produced in Juarez’s plants go to the United States, according to Mexico’s Economic Ministry. That easy access to the U.S. has also made Juarez, like other border cities, attractive to Mexico’s drug cartels that seek control in order to safeguard their smuggling routes for drugs and migrants headed north and cash and guns coming south.

8:53: Airline sources told Reuters the grounding of flights was believed to be tied to the Pentagon's use of counterdrone technology to address Mexican drug cartels' use of drones of the U.S.-Mexico border. The flight prohibition also covers some rural air space in neighboring New Mexico

Context:

The action barring flights at a single U.S. airport appear unprecedented, government officials said. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the FAA barred all civilian flights across the United States for several days.

9:00: Official FAA twitter account says closure of airspace is lifted. Flights will resume as normal

Nothing to see here folks...

9:05: AP Confirms

9:18: Reporting has cooled off for the moment. Questions still remain:

Why was the airspace shutdown so suddenly for 10 days? Just for the testing of "counter-drone technology"?

10:04: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on the social platform X that the FAA and Defense Department “acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion. The threat has been neutralized and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region.”