flights were immediately impacted<\/a>, according to air traffic control audio from El Paso International Airport. But just hours after the ground stop was announced, the FAA said the closure was lifted<\/p>\nThe FAA closed the airspace around 1 a.m. central time on Wednesday, Feb. 11, citing “special security reasons.” No further explanation for the closure was immediately provided by the FAA or other federal officials. Several hours later, around 8 a.m., the FAA announced that the airspace over El Paso was lifted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pilots flying into El Paso International Airport overnight were surprised to learn about the closure that ended up lasting only a few hours. \u00a0Air traffic control audio via LiveATC.net captured the moment air traffic control informed a surprised Southwest pilot about the airspace closure.<\/p>\n
“So the airport’s totally closed?” the pilot asked.<\/p>\n
“Apparently,” air traffic control responded.<\/p>\n
“So for 10 days, you guys are not open?” the pilot asked again.<\/p>\n
“Well, maybe, we’ll be here, but no air traffic,” the air traffic controller said.<\/p>\n
“OK,” he said, “thanks for that heads up.”<\/p>\n
An American Airlines pilot expressed similar surprise, according to air traffic control audio from LiveATC.net<\/p>\n
“What is this we’re hearing… about a TFR?” the pilot asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Say it again,” air traffic control responded.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Uh, we heard something about a TFR about no flying. What’s uh, the last guy tried to tell us what was going on, but we were on final,” the pilot said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Oh, yes, there’s a TFR going into effect right now in one hour… and it’s until the 21st, a ground stop basically, um, no air traffic,” the controller responded.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Uh, very interesting. OK,” the pilot said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pilots and air traffic controllers reacted in real time after the FAA closed the airspace over El Paso.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-161461","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\/161461","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=161461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}