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Posted by edward 15 hours ago

FAA halts all flights at El Paso airport for 10 days(www.nytimes.com)
308 points | 486 commentspage 2
wocka 10 hours ago|
The Federal Aviation Administration said it had lifted the temporary closure of airspace over El Paso that it had imposed last night. “All flights will resume as normal,” the F.A.A. said on social media.
huevosabio 10 hours ago|
What a bizarre move.
baq 10 hours ago||
Reminds me of the chaos monkey. Building resilience by breaking and fixing stuff.

Not sure if applicable here, though.

3D30497420 15 hours ago||
Further commentary/speculation on this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSB/comments/1r1pqnp/10_day_tfr_is...

It includes a local city Councilmember who's says he is working to get more information.

SirFatty 14 hours ago|
[flagged]
tclancy 14 hours ago||
First of all, you want "font". Second of all, don't do that.
daemoncoder 14 hours ago|||
Or "fount" from older, non-American English.
mikkupikku 13 hours ago||
Fount is definitely more correct. If we're talking a baptismal font, then it's font, but if were talking a fount of knowledge, the correct term is fount with font sometimes being used but derived from fount.

Etymology 1, meaning 3: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fount

Etymology 3: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/font

tclancy 7 hours ago||
Thank you, I couldn’t remember which but I figured I’d hit Muphry’s Law either way.
SirFatty 12 hours ago||||
Don't do what, exactly?
tclancy 5 hours ago||
Do not mix more than 1.00mL of chlorine with more than 0.00mL of bleach.
ploprof 14 hours ago||||
Don't do what?
tclancy 5 hours ago||
Return VHS tapes without rewinding.
gzread 14 hours ago|||
[dead]
exegete 11 hours ago||
Live camera of runway https://app.truelook.cloud/dashboard/581/980/live

Linked from airport website: https://elpasointernationalairport.com/live-cameras/

1e1a 11 hours ago|
poor PTZ mount :(
Shank 14 hours ago||
Nuclear weapons test? The latest test treaty just expired.

Edit: There are two TFRs, one in El Paso and one right next to it in the mountains: https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2234

Stevvo 14 hours ago||
I think not; it's not somewhere you can conduct a nuclear test without starting a war with Mexico. However it is interesting to look at the TFR area in Google maps; it looks just like a nuclear test site, but the craters are natural volcanoes.
IsTom 12 hours ago|||
Well, somebody has suggested nuking a tornado before. Why not a vulcano?
lazide 13 hours ago|||
Mexico isn’t going to start a war with the US. it would last a week at most, and they’d end up glowing even more than if the us ‘downwinded’ them all year.
mikkupikku 13 hours ago|||
If Mexico went to war with America they would rely on asymmetric insurgency tactics. They have no shortage of sympathetic people in America, not just Mexican nationals but native born Americans as well. America hasn't dealt with a genuine domestic insurgency situation before.
beAbU 12 hours ago|||
That's exactly what russia thought before invading the Ukraine.
tw04 9 hours ago||
Not to be pedantic but it’s just Ukraine. It is an independent country.

Russia calls is “the Ukraine” because they think it’s their territory and not an independent nation.

K0balt 14 hours ago|||
Probably just closing the airspace for the space alien emissary.
c420 13 hours ago||
Welcome. Tremendous to have you here. Really historic. Some people said it couldn’t happen, but I said keep an open mind, and now look. Intergalactic diplomacy. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. We’re ready to make a deal, a fair deal, maybe the best deal in the galaxy.
lvspiff 13 hours ago||
If there was ever a time for a Mars Attacks style invasion it is now
massysett 14 hours ago|||
Wouldn’t the Nevada Test Site be much better for this? Huge, government controlled, no major airports or cities, and moreover, already used for this sort of thing.
dboreham 53 minutes ago|||
No because there's no enemy there to shoot at.
1nightbearvulf 14 hours ago|||
[dead]
baubino 14 hours ago|||
This was my thought as well given the length of time of the closure.
karlkloss 14 hours ago||
3.6 roentgen you say?
c420 15 hours ago||
"A person familiar with the notices, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, said the action to close airspace over a major U.S. for security reasons over extended period hasn’t happened since immediately after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."

https://elpasomatters.org/2026/02/11/unexplained-faa-order-s...

dlcarrier 14 hours ago|
It shows how bad the lack of available sources is, when they interview someone familiar with the type notice in general, but not this specific notice.
con 12 hours ago||
FAA closed another airspace nearby: https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2234

- From February 11, 2026 at 0630 UTC (February 10, 2026 at 2330 MST)

- To February 21, 2026 at 0630 UTC (February 20, 2026 at 2330 MST)

My guess is nuclear tests

dathinab 12 hours ago|
it's too spontaneous for that

it it's "just" a training exercise or test they could have announced the closing weeks or month before it happening massively reducing the cost fallout from it

not that the current administration has in generally acted with care when it comes to causing huge financial damage to US cities, especially such they don't like

weirdsweatsuit 8 hours ago||
Representative Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat, said in a news conference that the explanation citing Mexican drones crossing the border as the reason for the closure was “not the information that we in Congress have been told.”

She said that there was no current or past threat to the area. “There’s no threat. There was not a threat, which is why the F.A.A. lifted this restriction so quickly,” she said. “The information coming from the administration does not add up.”

“There have been drone incursions from Mexico going back to as long as drones existed. So this is nothing new” (NYT)

sph 13 hours ago||
Maybe there's credible threat of MANPADs from the cartels? Wouldn't be the first time around, apparently.

https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1r1s4zt/faa_groun...

mikkupikku 13 hours ago|
Stopping life flights though? The supposed risk of cartels shooting down a helicopter vs the immediate risk of "this guy is going to die if we don't fly him to the nearest trauma center"... That risk calculus doesn't make sense.
gsk22 13 hours ago||
To be fair, risk calculus does not appear to be this administration's strong suit.
Errrrik 9 hours ago||
Lets just for a second pretend that cartel g2a attacks are the legitimate threat. You now have a decision in regards to sparing lives: 1 Life, ground the medivacs, vs 3-4 Lives and letting them fly. Risk the life of 1 person by not allowing them fly, vs risking more lives by Allowing them to fly. (I had to explain it again so that you hopefully understand)

Seems like they understand risk calculus more than you.

mikkupikku 7 hours ago||
You forgot to weigh the relative likelihood of somebody needing a life flight to survive vs the likelihood of that flight being shot down. The first is very high, or they'd not have called for a helicopter, while the second is quite low even if there is a cartel psycho running around with MANPADS. They're more likely to hold their missile in reserve than to randomly fire it off at some helicopter out of the blue.
nnnnico 12 hours ago||
More likely to be related to the E Files than the X ones
imglorp 11 hours ago|
E-File? Like, taxes?
ahhhhnoooo 10 hours ago||
Epstein files.
cheonn638 3 hours ago||
> Epstein files.

Nobody cares

imglorp 2 hours ago|||
Without rule of law, we don't really have a civilization.

Should there be some people laws don't apply to?

NietzscheanNull 3 hours ago|||
Nobody cares that a large number of billionaires and world leaders, individuals with the power to steer the course of society as a whole, are implicated in one of the largest (and darkest) scandals in history?

Speak for yourself.

utf_8x 10 hours ago|
The closure has been lifted: https://x.com/FAANews/status/2021583720465969421
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