{"id":160321,"date":"2026-02-11T18:52:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/160321\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T18:52:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:52:18","slug":"the-el-paso-airspace-closure-cost-me-100-and-a-nights-sleep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/160321\/","title":{"rendered":"The El Paso Airspace Closure Cost Me $100 and a Night’s Sleep"},"content":{"rendered":"

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kiva Lucero, 21, who is from El Paso and studies in New York City. He is the cofounder of a Paris-based creative collective. It has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

I was scrolling on Instagram on Tuesday when I saw the El Paso airspace<\/a> was closing for 10 days. Immediately, I was stressed and anxious.<\/p>\n

I had a flight booked from El Paso to Dallas for Thursday, and then Dallas to Paris, and had to get to Paris by the weekend for work.<\/p>\n

When I found out that what was supposed to be a 10-day closure lasted seven hours, I didn’t feel much relief \u2014 I had cancelled my flight to Dallas and spent nearly $100 on a bus that I haven’t been able to get refunded.<\/p>\n

I booked a bus ticket at three o’clock in the morning<\/p>\n

When I first found out about the airspace closure at around midnight on Tuesday, I called my airline immediately and explained the situation. I kind of freaked out.<\/p>\n

I asked them if it was possible for me to cancel the El Paso to Dallas leg of my flight, and I would just figure out a way to get to Dallas. <\/p>\n

They canceled my flight after a lot of hard negotiation. At three o’clock in the morning, I booked a ticket for a 12-hour bus ride from El Paso to Dallas, leaving at 7 p.m. on Wednesday and getting to Dallas 6:30 a.m. Thursday.<\/p>\n

I didn’t even know if I was going to make it to the bus. I was thinking El Paso could get completely locked down. I was up all night.<\/p>\n

I just didn’t expect anything good to come of the situation. I thought it could be a serious evacuation. I called my mom to make sure everything was good, because I didn’t want her staying in town if there was a major issue.<\/p>\n

I felt stressed and helpless<\/p>\n

When I saw on the New York Times in the morning that the closure was lifted<\/a>, I still couldn’t sleep. <\/p>\n

I called the airline again to reinstate my original booking, because I didn’t want to take a 12 hour bus. Luckily, they did.<\/p>\n

But it was hours of just stress and anxiety and feeling so helpless.<\/p>\n

I had already canceled plans with friends and work meetings because I thought I would be on the bus the next day.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, I should make it to Paris now, but it cost me $100 and a full night of sleep.<\/p>\n

A Trump administration official told Business Insider of the disruption: “Mexican cartel drones breached US airspace” and the Defense Department “took action to disable the drones,” and there was no threat to commercial travel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kiva Lucero, 21, who is from El Paso and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-160321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}