SpaceX rocket explosion leads to flight delays at Florida airports over fears of falling debris

The explosion of a huge SpaceX rocket above South Florida led to massive headaches for air travelers who were forced to endure unexpected delays due to the company’s latest mishap on Thursday.

The FAA had to halt air traffic around Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Orlando in fear of “space launch debris,” following the SpaceX failure.

“After all my years of traveling, this is a first,” wrote a Facebook user who identified himself as pharmaceutical executive Ray Peck after his flight to South America was forced to land in Miami.

Peck, the CEO of VxP Pharma in Indianapolis, had just taken off on a connecting flight from Miami to Medellín, Colombia, when his flight had to turn back to MIA.

“This was an absolute first,” Peck, 62, told NBC News from Colombia, where he landed nearly five hours late early Friday morning. 

“I’ve never had a situation where I’ve had to say, ‘No, I’m not late because of a missed connection, mechanical problem or even an unruly passenger. Yeah, our flight was delayed and had to go back to Miami because a rocket exploded over our heads and the pieces were falling down,'” he added.

Peck added that after the pilot’s announcement, the Colombia-bound passengers peered out their windows for possible space debris.

“Everybody was looking and wondering if they’re going to see pieces of that rocket going past the plane,” he said. “If it had been, ‘Oh here comes a rocket engine de-orbiting,’ that wouldn’t have been good.”

Traveler Jesse Winans, who had been on a flight from Costa Rica to Charlotte, could only look on in disbelief as he and his fellow flyers were forced into an unexpected layover in Fort Lauderdale.

“They’re trying to handle customers, but I think it’s gonna be a long process to get to where we’re going,” the exasperated traveler told NBC South Florida.

SpaceX, which experienced a similar mishap in January, vowed again to learn from this latest failure.

“We will review the data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause,” tje company said in a statement Thursday night. “As always, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship’s reliability.”

Or as Musk tried to more succinctly explain: “Rockets are hard.”