It's always a big deal when the Federal Aviation Administration has to order any plane to land for any reason. It's a very big deal when the FAA orders a ton of planes to land... and outwardly for no reason at all:

On the afternoon of Monday, January 10, 2022, at around 2:30 PM PST, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop order to all planes, at least in the western United States. The temporary pause on all movements to and from airports included aviators being ordered to land and lasted roughly between seven and 20 minutes before it was lifted and services returned to normal. There has so far been no explanation given for this action. In this vacuum of information, some are connecting the highly peculiar event to another ballistic missile test launch out of North Korea, the second in less than a week, that traveled 435 miles from its launch point, impacting relatively far out into the sea of Japan.

Well, "insane hermit kingdom launches a deeply troubling missile test" seems like a good enough justification to land all of those planes. Yet no official reason has been given. And the weird, understated urgency of the whole thing only deepens the mystery:

Multiple international authorities confirmed the firing of the missile:

The timing of the affair would seem to persuasively indicate that the missile was indeed the cause of the groundstop:

The launch was detected 7:27 a.m. Korea Standard Time, which would be roughly 20 minutes prior to the ordering of the ground stop at 2:50 p.m. Pacific Time.

Many commentators, meanwhile, noted that the last time there was anything even approaching this level of flight stoppage in the U.S. was the morning of September 11, 2001!

Very weird.

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