FAA just announced a 10 day emergency temporary restricted area for a 10 mile radius around El Paso.

[mattblaze@federate.social]

FAA just announced a 10 day emergency temporary restricted area for a 10 mile radius around El Paso. No flights are permitted from ground level to 18000 feet, grounding all flights to/from the El Paso airport (KELP).

Designed as “national defense airspace”, with “deadly force authorized if aircraft determined to pose a security threat”.

No reason given

[ben@bluetoot.hardill.me.uk]

@mattblaze I think the red flag exercise is running at the moment, which I think is in that area of the world

Scratch that, Red flag is Nevada (Nellis)

[mattblaze@federate.social]

Fort Bliss / Briggs Army Airfield is within the restricted area, which may or may not be related.

[mattblaze@federate.social]

@ben yeah, almost definitely not that. This was sudden and closes a large civil airport.

[mattblaze@federate.social]

This is very unusual. Aside from the disruption- it closes a large metropolitan airport for 10 days- no advance notice was given. So this isn’t for some planned event or operation.

[me_valentijn@m.ai6yr.org]

@mattblaze
Shutting down a major international airport for 10 days is insane. It'll be impacting something in the neighborhood of 100,000 passengers, plus medical flights, etc.

[me_valentijn@m.ai6yr.org]

@mattblaze
Only "rational" explanation I can come up with is using it to launch a war with Mexico, seize some territory or whatever, being as it's right on the border. But that's not rational either 😬

[kow@infosec.exchange]

@mattblaze is that where they were shipping immigrants? Response to ice?