Dallas Love Field went completely dark Saturday night after an FAA-issued alert concerning a security issue involving a commercial aircraft prompted its temporary closure, with the airport listed as closed starting at 8:29 p.m. and not scheduled to reopen until 6 a.m. Dallas police had responded to the airport just two minutes earlier for a call involving an aircraft alert, and what followed was a tense, confusing stretch for anyone watching flight status boards in North Texas.
According to NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, Dallas Police responded to the airport at 8:31 p.m. for a call regarding an aircraft alert. The station reported that officers’ preliminary investigation determined a threat had been made, but that it was later determined to be unfounded. NBC 5 said its crew was headed to Love Field to learn more, and that calls had already gone out to the airport for additional information.
The National Airspace System Status website, the FAA’s own tracker, listed the closure as running from 8:29 p.m. CST until 6 a.m. CST, per the station’s report. An FAA-issued alert concerning a security issue involving a commercial aircraft prompted the temporary closure, and a separate report from Belaaz noted that the listed end time did not guarantee the airport would actually reopen then.
No Official Word on a Bomb Threat
Belaaz also reported that there had been no official confirmation of a bomb threat at the airport, even as talk of one circulated. NBC 5 reported that an FAA-issued alert concerning a security issue involving a commercial aircraft prompted the closure, and that police later determined the threat was unfounded.
The scramble at Love Field came less than 24 hours after a nationwide ground stop had already thrown North Texas air travel into chaos. The same source notes that the ground stop, which began the previous Friday, halted flights across the country and left thousands of passengers stranded while airlines scrambled to recover.
A Rough Stretch for North Texas Flyers
That ground stop wasn’t some minor blip. As reported by Dallas Morning News, the FAA order upended flight traffic at DFW Airport, the central hub for American Airlines, and at Love Field, the home base for Southwest Airlines. Federal officials attributed the outage to a telecommunications equipment failure and said it was not a security incident, according to the same Belaaz report cited above. The Dallas Observer reported that the technical issues affected 22 regional Air Route Traffic Control Centers during that disruption.
By 7:30 p.m. that Friday, the fallout was already severe: DFW had recorded more than 500 cancellations and nearly 600 delays, while Love Field had logged over 180 cancellations and more than 40 delays, the Dallas Morning News reported, citing FlightAware data. The FAA lifted that order Friday night, but delays and cancellations continued into Saturday as airlines worked to restore their schedules, the paper’s follow-up report noted.
As of Saturday night, Love Field’s sudden closure had been prompted by an FAA-issued alert concerning a security issue involving a commercial aircraft, and this remains a developing story. NBC 5 said it would continue to update its reporting as more information becomes available.
