UPDATE Dec 12, 2026 – The Federal Aviation Administration Monday issued a safety alert related to the problems encountered by airliners flying below SpaceX spacecraft in 2025 and reported by ProPublica last week. The link to the SAFO can be found at the end of the blog.

It would be an understatement to say that aviation in the Americas has had a rocky start in 2026. The US arrest and extraction of Venezuela’s president and first lady on January 3 shut down airspace across the Caribbean region and delayed hundreds of commercial flights. This was obvious to all and, given the circumstances, not surprising. That said, other air safety events in 2025 deserve a second look because they suggest more trouble ahead, not just in the United States, but across vast swaths of airspace beyond its borders.

As 2025 came to a close, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy, was unsuccessful in getting politicians to remove a policy hidden in the Department of Defense budget bill that once again allows military flights in the congested airspace of Washington Reagan National Airport without procedures the safety board deems essential.

You will recall, on January 29, 2025, an Army helicopter on a training flight and operating without its transponder flew into an American Airlines regional jet, sending both aircraft into the Potomac River killing 67 people.

Homendy made an unusually emotional plea to lawmakers about the bill, then watched as it got the votes it needed anyway. No change required.

One week later, the Senate passed the NTSB-endorsed ROTOR Act which addresses the issue. The legislation has gone to the House for consideration.

While all this was going on, it was also becoming clear that there are other times and places where military aviation does not play well with others. And that would be in the region surrounding Venezuela.

On December 12, a private jet flying from Aruba nearly collided with an American military transport plane at 26-thousand feet. “They were really close,” the unidentified pilot said on a recording posted on Live ATC. “We were climbing right into him.” “It was big, maybe a 777 or a 767.”

The following day, a JetBlue flight to New York, ascending from the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao, nearly collided with a US military plane flying without a transponder.

The pilot called the incursion into his airspace, “outrageous”, telling controllers, “We just had traffic pass directly in front of us within five miles of us — maybe two or three miles — but it was an air-to air-refueler from the United States Air Force and he was at our altitude,” the pilot said. “We had to stop our climb.”

The operation to arrest Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores earlier this week triggered a flight ban in the area, and caused hundreds of airline delays. While the ban has ended, private warnings that began last Fall remain, according to the online advisory service, OpsGroup.

“The US, Canada, EASA and several European states continue to advise avoiding Venezuelan airspace and to exercise caution across the surrounding region,” reads one warning.

Into the mix we now have commercial spacecraft bringing a different kind of threat.

On January 16, 2025, SpaceX Starship 7 launched from the company’s site in Texas. It blew apart 90 miles above the earth in spectacular fashion.

Debris spewed into the Caribbean, extending beyond the mishap protection zone from northeastern Cuba to Saint Maarten, where debris from an unexpected event was thought likely to be confined.

A new and fascinating story in ProPublica, details how dozens of airliners were flying in the vicinity at the time. Twenty had to quickly move out of the area including Air Transat, Spirit Airlines and Delta Air Lines Flight 573 from San Juan to Atlanta. But when ATC put Iberia Flight 379 from Madrid to San Juan into a holding pattern, its crew, worried about running out of fuel, declared an emergency.

Delta’s spokesperson later told ProPublica the event was no big deal. The spacecraft disintegrating across the Caribbean “had minimal impact to our operation and no aircraft damage.” The company’s “safety management system and our safety culture help us address potential issues to reinforce that air transportation remains the safest form of travel in the world.”

I’m troubled when people who make a living in aviation use aviation’s safety record to deny hazards staring them in the face.

After the Starship 7 event, two other SpaceX vehicles exploded, one in March and one in May. The Air Line Pilots Association asked the FAA to suspend test flights until the causes could be determined. The pilots believed the episodes raised “additional concerns about whether the FAA is providing adequate separation of space operations from airline flights.”

SpaceX was eager to press forward. By fall, it received permission from the FAA to increase the number of launches from 5 a year to 25. The FAA determined, the company “met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements.”

In the black is white / up is down world that is my country these days, denial trumps facts. There is no past event that can’t be dismissed by present nonsense like the suggestion that disaster avoided is proof of safety.

2026 isn’t looking good – because of some universally intractable issues, power and money aka political and economic interests. That’s where we are today. For more on this subject, I urge you to read the ProPublica article by clicking here.

The FAA’s safety alert, announced today can be found here.