El Paso flights resume after US anti-drone system prompts sudden shutdown

WASHINGTON - Flights in and out of the Texas border city of El Paso resumed on Feb 11, after bureaucratic infighting over a secretive military anti-drone system prompted the Trump administration to ban air traffic for more than seven hours.

The sudden closure of the nation’s 71st busiest airport by the Federal Aviation Administration stranded air travellers and disrupted medical evacuation flights overnight. The FAA initially said the closure would last 10 days, in what would have been an unprecedented action involving a single airport.

Government and airline officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the FAA closed the airspace due to concerns that a laser-based counter-drone system being tested by the US Army could pose risks to air traffic.

The two agencies planned to discuss the issue later this month but the Army opted to proceed without FAA approval, sources said.

The FAA lifted its restrictions after the Army agreed to more safety tests before using the system, which is housed at Fort Bliss, next to El Paso International Airport.

The White House was surprised by the El Paso airspace closure, according to two sources speaking on condition of anonymity, touching off a scramble among law enforcement agencies to figure out what happened.

The FAA lifted the restrictions shortly after the situation was discussed in the office of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, the sources said.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who oversees the FAA, said the closure had been prompted by a drone incursion by a Mexican drug cartel.

However, a drone sighting near an airport would typically lead to a brief pause on traffic, not an extended closure, and the Pentagon says there are more than 1,000 such incidents each month along the US-Mexico border.

The move had stranded numerous aircraft from Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines at the airport, which handles about four million passengers annually.

El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson said the FAA did not reach out to the airport, the police chief or other local officials before shutting down the airspace.

“I want to be very, very clear that this should have never happened,” he said at a news conference.

The US official in charge of airport security, Transportation Security Administration Acting Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill, also told Congress that she had not been notified.

“That’s a problem,” said Republican Representative Tony Gonzales of Texas, who said there are daily drone incursions along the US-Mexico border.

Airlines caught off-guard

Airlines were also caught off-guard by the early Feb 11 announcement. Southwest Airlines said the effects should be minimal for its 23 daily departures scheduled.

“FAA has not exactly acquitted itself credibly, objectively, or professionally,” said Mr Bob Mann, an airline industry consultant. “The question should be, do we get an explanation?”

Mr Trump has repeatedly threatened to deploy US military force against Mexican drug cartels, which have used drones to carry out surveillance and attacks on civilian and government infrastructure, according to US and Mexican security sources.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said at her daily news conference that her administration would try to find out what exactly happened but had no information about drone traffic along the border.

Tensions between the US and regional leaders have ramped up since the Trump administration mounted a large-scale military buildup in the southern Caribbean, attacked Venezuela and seized its president, Mr Nicolas Maduro, in a military operation.

The FAA curbed flights throughout the Caribbean after the attack, forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights. REUTERS