EL PASO, Texas (KVIA)– El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson said the city\u2019s airport was thrown into \u201cchaos\u201d and residents were left frightened after a temporary airspace shutdown halted flights overnight for security reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur airport was in chaos. Our community was scared. All because someone decided to shut down our airspace,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n
Passengers arriving at El Paso International Airport on Wednesday morning appeared confused after being told that no flights were departing or arriving due to the restriction.<\/p>\n
Johnson said he shared that confusion, learning of the shutdown through late-night calls and text messages.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe woke up just like many of you at midnight last night, one in the morning, to the texts and the calls that we received that our airspace was shut down,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After becoming aware of the closure, Johnson said he contacted local and state partners, including officials at Fort Bliss and U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, to push for the restriction to be lifted and to seek answers.<\/p>\n
He said local leaders should have been notified before any decision was made to close the airspace.<\/p>\n
\u201cEl Paso deserves better communication and better coordination, and more respect for El Paso and the people that live in this community,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n
Johnson also raised concerns about potential safety risks, saying medical equipment scheduled to arrive from Dallas and other parts of the country for surgeries did not make it to El Paso during the shutdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a lot of surgical equipment that was coming in from Dallas and other parts of the country to do surgeries here in our community,\u201d he said. \u201cThat type of equipment did not show up during El Paso.\u201d<\/p>\n
Federal officials have not publicly detailed the reason for the temporary restriction. The airspace has since reopened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KVIA)– El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson said the city\u2019s airport was thrown into \u201cchaos\u201d and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-160867","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\/160867","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=160867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}