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Orange orbs of light fly across the sky as debris from a SpaceX rocket launched in Texas is seen over the Turks and Caicos Islands on January 16, 2025.
Marcus Haworth@marcusahaworth | Marcus Haworth via Reuters
Several commercial flights have been diverted or delayed since SpaceX’s Starship the rocket crashed during the seventh flight test on Thursday.
According to flight tracking system Flightradar24, dozens of flights were affected.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it “briefly slowed and steered the aircraft around the crash site” after issuing a warning to pilots about a “hazardous crash site for Starship rocket debris.”
The rocket lifted off from a SpaceX facility near Brownsville, Texas shortly after 5:30 p.m. ET and headed east from Texas. It disintegrated, and SpaceX said on X that it “will continue to review today’s flight test data to better understand the root cause.”
The FAA has not received any reports of injuries or property damage from the Starship wreckage, an agency official told CNBC.
A JetBlue Airways flight from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to San Juan, Puerto Rico, was diverted back to Fort Lauderdale nearly two hours into the flight, according to FlightAware, another flight-tracking site. JetBlue did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other flights near Turks and Caicos include a FedEx According to flight tracking data, the cargo plane turned around while the Spirit Airlines plane also changed course.
The airlines and SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the outages.
An American Airlines A spokeswoman said the carrier had fewer than 10 diversions due to the issue.
Delta Air Lines said it diverted four flights to or from Caribbean destinations to other airports because of the debris warnings.
Airlines and other commercial flights, as well as private aircraft, fight for air spaceespecially in the congested area around Florida, but exposure may vary by launch.
Australia’s Qantas Airways said it had to ground several flights between Johannesburg and Sydney at the last minute following the Federal Aviation Administration’s recommendation that SpaceX rockets return over much of the Indian Ocean.
“Although we try to make changes to our schedule in advance, the timing of recent launches has been delayed, which has meant that we have had to delay some flights just before departure,” said Ben Holland, the airline’s chief executive. operational center. “Customers generally understand that this is out of the control of the airlines and that we cannot fly in that area when the rocket returns. We are contacting SpaceX to see if they can clarify the areas and time windows for the rocket returns to reduce to a minimum of obstacles for our passengers on the route.”
— CNBC’s Michael Sheetz contributed to this report.
