Australian airline Qantas delayed some flights by up to six hours to avoid potential rocket debris over the Indian Ocean.
Qantas airlines has delayed multiple flights between Australia and South Africa in recent weeks—sometimes by up to six hours—due to warnings about potential falling debris from SpaceX launches, the company told multiple media outlets.
Ben Holland, the head of Qantas’s operations center, told The Guardian that his company received warnings from U.S. authorities that covered a large portion of the Indian Ocean with little advance notice, forcing delays for flights between Sydney and Johannesburg. Flights from South African Airways have also been affected by warnings of incoming SpaceX debris, according to The Guardian.
SpaceX has completed eight launches since the beginning of the year, including a Falcon 9 launch on Wednesday carrying two landers built by private space companies, Firefly and ispace, that are both headed to the Moon. The company has also been attempting to launch the seventh test flight of its Starship megarocket, but weather forced the mission to be rescheduled several times. It’s currently slated to launch today (which you can watch live here). For these preliminary test flights, SpaceX targets soft splashdowns of the upper stage in the Indian Ocean, and the upcoming test is no different.
Neither SpaceX nor Qantas immediately responded to a request for comment.
As the frequency of commercial space launches increases, so does their potential impact on terrestrial passenger travel. This effect is magnified by advancements in rocket technology that enable companies like SpaceX to recover and reuse key components, such as boosters. However, not all rocket parts are recovered; some, like heat shields or upper stage debris, are designed to either burn up during reentry or fall into designated areas, adding to the complexity of managing and tracking what goes up—and what inevitably comes back down.
In November, the Federal Aviation Administration released a draft environmental impact assessment evaluating SpaceX’s proposal to increase the number of Starship launches from its Boca Chica, Texas, base. The company’s plans included landing some of the rockets in the Indian Ocean, potentially affecting a huge swath of airspace between Australia and Africa, according to the FAA’s diagrams.
“The FAA often provides data to launch operators to avoid operations during days with high aviation traffic volume and identifies times with minimal impact,” the agency wrote. “FAA acknowledges, however, that while these operating windows would minimize disruption to the [National Airspace System], they are likely to increase disruptions to the traveling public in the vicinity of the proposed launch or landing operations.”
Each of the 25 Starship launches that SpaceX was seeking permission for would include two landings—for the Starship vehicle itself and for its Super-Heavy first-stage rocket.
The Qantas delays aren’t the first time SpaceX has disrupted commercial airline schedules. In 2018, an Elon Musk publicity stunt in which a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carried a Tesla Roadster into space caused 4,645 minutes in flight delays, according to reporting by Vox. And before the FAA changed its procedures in 2023, a typical rocket launch from Florida could force as many as 36 flights to be re-routed, resulting in 300 minutes of delays and 1,500 extra miles flown.