Orange balls of light flying through the sky as debris from a SpaceX rocket launched in Texas are seen over the Turks and Caicos Islands on Jan. 16, 2025.
Marcus Haworth@marcusahaworth | Marcus Haworth Via Reuters
Several commercial flights were diverted or delayed after SpaceX’s Starship the rocket broke up on his seventh practice visit Thursday.
Many flights were affected, according to the Flightradar24 tracker.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it “slowed down and diverted aircraft around the area of falling vehicle debris” after issuing a warning to pilots about the “dangerous location of debris from the Starship rocket.”
The rocket lifted off from the SpaceX facility near Brownsville, Texas, shortly after 5:30 pm ET, and headed east from Texas. It broke down and SpaceX said on X that it would “continue to review today’s test data to understand why.”
The FAA has received no reports of injuries or property damage from the Starship debris, an agency spokesperson told CNBC.
A JetBlue Airways A flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to San Juan, Puerto Rico returned to Fort Lauderdale, about two hours into the flight, according to FlightAware, another aviation monitoring site. JetBlue did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other airports near Turks and Caicos, including a FedEx price The cargo jet appeared to be turning around, according to the airline’s navigation system, while the Spirit Airlines flight also changed course.
The airline and SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the disruptions.
An American Airlines The spokesman said the carrier had less than 10 disruptions due to the incident.
Delta Air Lines it said it had diverted four flights to or from the Caribbean to other airports due to debris warnings.
Airlines and other commercial aircraft, as well as private aircraft, competing on the planeespecially in most areas around Florida, but results can vary depending on the setting.
Australia’s Qantas Airways said it had to delay several flights between Johannesburg and Sydney at the last minute on advice from the Federal Aviation Administration regarding the re-entry of SpaceX rockets over the Indian Ocean.
“Although we are trying to adjust our schedule in advance, the latest schedule has been delayed which means we will be delaying some flights shortly after departure,” said Ben Holland, the airline’s chief executive. service center. “The customer understands that this is not an aeronautical process and that we cannot fly to the site of the rocket’s reentry. We are contacting SpaceX to see if they can improve the areas and time windows of the rocket’s reentry to minimize future disruption to passengers on the route.”
– CNBC’s Michael Sheetz contributed to this story.
2025-01-17 17:19:32
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