Overview
- On January 16, SpaceX’s Starship broke apart minutes after liftoff, with debris falling for about 50 minutes across busy routes between Florida and the Caribbean.
- Three aircraft—a JetBlue A321, an Iberia A330, and a Gulfstream G550—were directly affected, all crews declared fuel emergencies, one issued a Mayday, and all flights landed safely with roughly 450 people onboard.
- FAA “debris response areas” were activated four minutes after Starship stopped transmitting data, and SpaceX notified the agency of disintegration about 15 minutes after the explosion, according to FAA documents.
- Air traffic controllers in Miami first learned details from pilots who saw debris, and Corriere’s analysis found at least 23 aircraft flying above 20,000 feet within the FAA-identified danger areas.
- The Wall Street Journal first reported the FAA records, as separate reporting notes an FAA expert review on debris risk convened in February was suspended in August, and agency forecasts anticipate sharply higher launch volumes in coming years.