Elon Musk's failed SpaceX launch grounded Orlando flights

Airport authorities reported a 'ground stop due to space launch debris.'

Mar 7, 2025 - 16:04

Elon Musk's failed SpaceX launch grounded Orlando flights

On March 6 the SpaceX Starship rocket that Elon Musk is promising to one day bring to Mars exploded eight minutes into its eighth test flight.

The upper portion of the Starship separated from the engines on its lower stage, and after the ship lost contact with ground operations, it spun out of control and disintegrated.

Streams of debris spread across the sky from the Starship base in Brownsville, Texas, reaching as far away as the Bahamas, a six-hour flight.

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'Ground Stop due to space launch debris in the area'

The explosion also disrupted flight operations at Orlando International Airport (MCO) and several other airports in South Florida. At 5:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern, Orlando airport authorities said the airport was "currently under a ground stop due to space-launch debris in the area."

MCO also told travelers affected by delayed flights to "please check directly with your airline for further updates."

While all saw the stop lifted by 8 p.m. on Thursday night, other airports under a ground stop include Fort Lauderdale International (FLL), Palm Beach International (PBI) and the main Miami International Airport (MIA).

The SpaceX Starship lifts off from Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas on March 6, 2025 for its eighth test flight. Photo by Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images.
RONALDO SCHEMIDT/Getty Images

Due to its large size, MIA saw the most disruption, and flights were still running with an average delay of 30 to 45 minutes by 9:10 p.m., according to FAA records.

'The flight is delayed by 14 hours': Traveler accounts

While most flights were moved out of the bottleneck and arrived at their destinations relatively fast, others saw major delays.

A few flights on low-cost carrier Porter that were scheduled to land at Fort Lauderdale at the time of the explosion were also redirected to MCO.

More on travel:

"We were supposed to arrive at MIA and connect on a flight to go to GRU [Sao Paulo, Brazil], but the flight is delayed by 14 hours," one traveler wrote on the American Airlines (AAL) forum on Reddit. "This will make us lose the next flight, so we won't be able to catch a flight to my last destination until Saturday. Three days traveling."

"This kind of stuff can lead to major cascading delays," another Redditor wrote in response to the post. "I don't know if it's the only factor affecting your flight, but American is not the only airline whose operations at MIA got hosed today."

Public angry at Elon Musk due to air delays

Public anger at Elon Musk, whom the Trump administration tasked with overhauling the federal government, has been growing rapidly as his Doge agency guts departments and cuts tens of thousands of jobs.

Public discussion of the incident focused on everything from the airport delays and cost to taxpayers to the environmental damage that the starship debris was causing to the Bahamian territory on which it landed.

"Blame Elon Musk," another Redditor under the u/whiskeytown2 username wrote in response to the passenger complaining about travel delays. "One of his shitty SpaceX rockets failed during testing. They shut down a lot of airports in the south Florida."

In a statement on the crash, SpaceX executive leadership said it would "review the data from today's flight test to better understand root cause."