CNN's Pete Muntean could not hide his shock at the Federal Aviation Administration's "unprecedented" overnight move to shut down a U.S. airport for more than a week.
The FAA closed the airspace over El Paso, Texas, for 10 days without explanation, but Muntean told "CNN News Central" that a source familiar with the situation told him the decision was related to an unspecified military operation at a nearby U.S. Army base.
"It's a huge deal," Muntean said. "You know, it was a mystery, now, a little bit less so, and the new reporting from me, a source familiar briefed by the Federal Aviation Administration on this really unprecedented 10-day airspace shutdown over El Paso, Texas, right on the border there with Mexico, says this is all linked to military activity at nearby Fort Bliss, specifically Biggs Army Airfield. You can see it on the map there, just north of the El Paso International Airport. That is significant because it seems that the Defense Department was carrying out some sort of operation there, still sort of unspecified, which caused the FAA to think that they could not assure the safety of flights going in and out of El Paso International Airport. Therefore, that led to this blanket sweeping airspace shutdown without modern precedent."
"A lot of people online have been pointing to 9/11 as a similar incident causing something like this, that was a nationwide emergency airspace shutdown," Muntean added. "The situation was fluid, but it was pretty obvious why that shutdown went into place. This really broke overnight, and it wasn't very clear why this went into place. There is never, ever in the history of the Federal Aviation Administration, and I can say that with some authority as a pilot and a flight instructor, been a large scale shutdown of airspace over a large metropolitan area. We're talking about a city of about a million people, about a thousand flights operating in that 10-day period in and out of El Paso, Texas."
The shutdown should have a significant ripple effect on air traffic around the country, and Muntean said he's never seen a similar situation.
"This is not a small airport, really billed as the gateway to Mexico, this airport," he said. "So this is going to have a big trickle-down here. I want to also point out the things in this notice to airmen or temporary flight restriction that make this so different than other temporary restrictions on flights that we see for things like VIP movements or presidential movements. This includes all flights up to 18,000 feet. The emphasis there on all flights that's commercial flights. Also police helicopters and medevac helicopters. Usually those things are exempted from a large ban on airspace of about 10 miles here. So this is really significant, and the new details are just coming in we now have a better idea of why this was put in place. A bit of an impasse between the Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration."
Muntean said he's especially interested in what sort of operations the Defense Department is conducting at the base.
"You know, Biggs Army Airfield is a major helicopter base," he added. "A lot of training there done for the Army, also a drone base. So some questions about drone operations there, of course, some big questions here about whether this is something that the federal government and the Department of Defense has not disclosed, and maybe that is why we're not getting some clarity about why this is being put in place with such a sweeping hand by the Federal Aviation Administration. It's really interesting that the Defense Department is actually referring people, calling them to the FAA, and so now we're kind of stuck in this zone where nobody is really able to get a lot of new information. We'll keep pushing and trying to get that for you."
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