FAA shuts down El Paso airspace for 10 days and won’t say why
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That’s not a portion of the El Paso NOTAM, it’s just a different NOTAM.
NOTAMs aren’t unusual. Indeed, the main issue with the NOTAM system these days is that there’s too many of them and pilots can’t possibly process them all. Even TFRs (a specific type of NOTAM) are common, and pilots occasionally miss even those because they’re drowning in NOTAMs.
What’s uncommon is announcing they’re shutting down a major airport for ten days with only a few hours’ notice and no explanation, then cancelling the TFR a few hours after it was published, again with no explanation.
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Not in NM we don't! Up to 30% of residents speak Spanish at home. But I hear so much Spanish around me that I'm not sure how evenly distributed it is. Also, I must be very Christian, because I've accepted Jesús into my house countless times.
OT fun fact: Traditional Northern NM Spanish is its own dialect that stems from Spanish from 400 years ago.
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Except that a) almost all mail is transported by ground because it is way cheaper and b) mail-in ballots generally go to a county elections center, which for most of the US (and especially in blue leaning areas which are mostly cities), disrupting air mail wouldn't impact much of anything. The exceptions are absentee ballots mailed from significantly far away, or overseas ballots from expats/military but those don't make up the bulk of mail-in ballots for most states and disrupting their delivery would only have a chance of impacting incredibly close races. That isn't impossible but it seems like a lot of bad press and legal risk for an outcome that isn't highly impactful for the intended purpose.
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We have mail in voting and drop boxes so if you don't want to pay for a stamp or risk your ballot to the post office, you can walk/drive/ride to the drop box and just drop the ballot in, all the way up to the close of the polls. Then we get emails or texts with our ballot status, typically things like received, signature verified, and counted.
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Government by executive order + executive tweet is madness.
Procedural nihilism, a collapse of power into such flimsy apparatus as one tweet, or one man?
This is not actually how power works. Try doing your work today, in total fiat but only fiat mode.
The mid 20th century philosopher Hannah Arendt said all human "work" including the public work of government, is the result of sometimes vast de facto human collectives, an "organ-ized" society properly so called.
One man + one tweet is madness and this cannot be how we conduct this business moving forward.
Procedural nihilism, a collapse of power into such flimsy apparatus as one tweet, or one man?
This is not actually how power works. Try doing your work today, in total fiat but only fiat mode.
The mid 20th century philosopher Hannah Arendt said all human "work" including the public work of government, is the result of sometimes vast de facto human collectives, an "organ-ized" society properly so called.
One man + one tweet is madness and this cannot be how we conduct this business moving forward.
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don't you worry guys, once the centrist dems get back in, everything will go back to normal
This is such a lie it isn't even funny.
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WSJ is reporting there were Mexican cartel drones in the airspace. That is a legitimate risk to airlines in that case.
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And Donald Trump reports that "migrant caravans" are flooding north to the United States; doesn't make it true.
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Using anti-drone technology against cartel drones seems like the wrong approach (aside from maybe using them as a test environment, since the next major military engagement we're in will be fought largely with drones... see what's going on in Ukraine).
Instead, wouldn't you want to track the drones to find out where they go, so you can watch for cartel members in the States (and therefore under US jurisdiction) to pick up the goods?
Instead, wouldn't you want to track the drones to find out where they go, so you can watch for cartel members in the States (and therefore under US jurisdiction) to pick up the goods?
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El Paso's airport is less than 10 nm from the one in Ciudad Juarez, and a good 20-25% of that area would be Mexican airspace. Was the USA really threatening to shoot down civilian air traffic in another country?
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If "cartels" really wanted to fly things across the border undetected, why would they do so within the airspace of an international airport, near a military base and city of 700 000 people?
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Fun fact: If you look at the New Mexico license plates, you will see it says: "New Mexico, USA". Because apparently people were getting stopped and asked about immigration status before they added the USA to the plate.
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Because the cartels weren't actually trying to fly goods across the border, but instead were testing the US' reaction to drones flying in the area?
Edit: Or, the cartels thought that their drones would be lost in the clutter of actual aircraft in the area?
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Or because a kakistocratic government doesn’t provide talking points, it has its spokespeople flood the zone with shit.
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I’m just spitballing here, but there’s a slight possibility that the government is run by incompetent ideological nut jobs who thought a dramatic closure would rally the nation to their anti-immigrant cause, but in the end, they pissed off all of their base who reside in West Texas and uses that airport. Then they quickly spread their chicken wings and beat a hasty retreat when a certain foul smelling organic substance hit the air circulation system.
Hey, is that a TACO?
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Unfortunately that doesn't help you in this day and age. Especially if you're first nations in NM.
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My sleep-deprived brain came up with this scenario:
The administration is killing off the older Americans with its delusional brain-worm fuckwit in charge of the health care of the US. The CDC can no longer be trusted to report accurate death tolls from the last year. Without the older Americans, who make up the greater majority of GOP voters, they can't maintain power in November. There's a non-zero chance that once again, Trump will be impeached. And this time he may actually be removed from office looking at a very likely swing in congress, eliminating almost all presidential power in government, because Vance was chosen mostly to secure a minor bloc of the GOP and lacks pretty much any ability to unite the party.
Assuming this - which I know sounds like stretch, but it really is quite plausible - The only way they can stay in power is to call off the elections. How would they do that? Declare a national emergency. This is how they're preparing that possibility. Creating bogus national security "threats" without saying what they are, then amplifying the lie that the US is "under siege" and we can't "afford" to change direction in the middle of that.
Never mind that the US faced a much bigger threat from within and without during every major war - including the fucking civil war - and still held elections.
So this is laying the groundwork for an eventual taking over of the government by the delusional fuckwits in charge now. Because they've already gone over the line legally, and half of them likely face charges for acts that by then can be considered treason once reason is restored. They know they have no chance of escaping that fate. So they're going all in to prevent it, and laying the groundwork for that now.
The administration is killing off the older Americans with its delusional brain-worm fuckwit in charge of the health care of the US. The CDC can no longer be trusted to report accurate death tolls from the last year. Without the older Americans, who make up the greater majority of GOP voters, they can't maintain power in November. There's a non-zero chance that once again, Trump will be impeached. And this time he may actually be removed from office looking at a very likely swing in congress, eliminating almost all presidential power in government, because Vance was chosen mostly to secure a minor bloc of the GOP and lacks pretty much any ability to unite the party.
Assuming this - which I know sounds like stretch, but it really is quite plausible - The only way they can stay in power is to call off the elections. How would they do that? Declare a national emergency. This is how they're preparing that possibility. Creating bogus national security "threats" without saying what they are, then amplifying the lie that the US is "under siege" and we can't "afford" to change direction in the middle of that.
Never mind that the US faced a much bigger threat from within and without during every major war - including the fucking civil war - and still held elections.
So this is laying the groundwork for an eventual taking over of the government by the delusional fuckwits in charge now. Because they've already gone over the line legally, and half of them likely face charges for acts that by then can be considered treason once reason is restored. They know they have no chance of escaping that fate. So they're going all in to prevent it, and laying the groundwork for that now.
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I moved to El Paso in 1979. You know how much space/high tech/air defense stuff goes on this area. While I can certainly buy the idea of a drone crossing the border, most eastbound flights pass over Ciudad Juarez when landing at El Paso International Airport when the winds are right. My speculation was that this had something to do with the TB outbreak at the Montana Immigrant detention facility. The 10-day span had me thinking about the normal regimen for antibiotics being administered to all the detention center residents.
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Thank you both.
As for all the useless "people" who downvoted my simple query, I pray the next time you're faced with a question you haven't any idea how to phrase into a search engine, nobody will help you.
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The downvotes were unnecessary.
If it helps anyone, you can think of planes as boats that can travel in a 3 dimensions and you won't be too far off most of the time.
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Were these drones stanped with “Property of the Sinaloa Cartel” on them? How do they know these were owned by the cartels and not just people who own drones? Why would the cartels bother with drones when they ship drugs across the border by the metric ton? Heck, I bet the cartels even use the freight terminal at El Paso airport and were pissed they now have to reroute their drug shipments to another airport. The paperwork that creates!
Or was this just a stunt by a government whose more keen on owning libs and pulling off idiotic feats of performance art to make their point?
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That wouldn’t be a ten-day TFR for no stated reason, it would be a short TFR stating that there’s risk from uncontrolled drones.
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
For 10 days? And not telling anyone? Seems incredibly stupid (although ....). Think of all the free publicity by telling everyone it was the cartel's fault rather than crickets.
Smells like ,... bullshit.
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The part that doesn't ring true to me is why they would have initially announced that the airspace was closed for 10 freaking days. That's oddly specific, and given the disruption and real cost involved in that decision it suggests to me that the cartel story is a lie or only a fraction of the truth (e.g. the DOD was planning an extended test of an LLM-driven drone defense for the possibility of cartel drones and could not guarantee against collateral damage).
Either way, I'm 100% certain that incompetence and a risible lack of communication and planning will eventually be revealed to have had an outsize role to play in the debacle.
ETA: dang, I need to be quicker on the draw, 3 other folks got there first!
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Looks like the drone story is true...partially. the US was using drones in Mexico.
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/l..._content=link&utm_campaign=fark&ICID=ref_fark
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/l..._content=link&utm_campaign=fark&ICID=ref_fark
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Drones shutting down an airport for ten days is new and unbelievable.
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That actually seems like an ideal place to do it; fly low altitude on pre-programmed routes, seems super easy to get lost in the noise and bustle of the city. Drive your cartel van to a random location, launch the drone, and have it fly to a random location in the urban agglomeration just across the border for a quick scheduled pickup; it would sure be a lot less conspicuous than doing it out in the middle of nowhere, and tracking a drone in an environment like that would be tough to impossible. And with the airport right there, you can depend on your drone not just getting shot down willy-nilly (probably).
Not commenting on the truthfulness of the claims, just noting that this location seems like an ideal place to illicitly move things across the border by drone.
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How it started
Southwest airlines contributed $125k to Trump's 2020 re-election campaign
Southwest airlines donated $200k to Republican candidates in 2024
CEO Bob Jordan stated after the election that Trump's policies would "Great for business"
How it's going: largest airlines at El Paso airport
#1: Southwest airlines, 1.9M passengers/year, 50% of total traffic
Womp womp
Southwest airlines contributed $125k to Trump's 2020 re-election campaign
Southwest airlines donated $200k to Republican candidates in 2024
CEO Bob Jordan stated after the election that Trump's policies would "Great for business"
How it's going: largest airlines at El Paso airport
#1: Southwest airlines, 1.9M passengers/year, 50% of total traffic
Womp womp
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Then (a) why didn’t they state that as the reason to begin with, and (b) why ten fucking days?
This was a fuckup. The drones are an excuse.
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After Orange Shitler's carnage, I wonder if we'll ever get competent grown-ups working in the government again in the future?
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