El Paso Airport Shut Down By The FAA For Special Security Reason

The FAA shut down the EL Paso Airport starting 11:30PM local time, Tuesday night and it will remain closed until 11:30PM Feb 20th.

This was abrupt. Local and State civilian and military authoring received no prior notification.

This affects 1,000 flights, nearly half served by Southwest Airlines.

I did a search on when the last time a US airport was shut down for special security reasons, and it turned up no results. Flights are diverted at times, for a short period of time, when someone like the President or Vice President is landing or taking off, but this is highly unusual.

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Ynotisay · M

Here's the New York Times take from about 10 minutes ago.
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When you see "conflicting explanations" you can fill in the blanks. Someone's lying.

- Officials on Wednesday offered conflicting explanations for a temporary closure of airspace over El Paso, after the Federal Aviation Administration rescinded an order issued hours earlier to ground flights for 10 days.

Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation, and officials from the White House and the Pentagon said Mexican cartel drones breached U.S. airspace, prompting the temporary closure of airspace over El Paso. But two people briefed by Trump administration officials said the shutdown was prompted by the Defense Department’s use of new counter-drone technology and concerns about the risks it could pose to other aircraft in the area.