National Airspace Coronavirus Shutdown Rumors Abound

But shutting down the NAS would be a huge step. Still, it's a hot topic in the rumor mill, and here's why.

James Asquith wrote a story for Forbes.com stating that the United States and Canada were on the verge of shutting down the airspace, though that story has since been taken down. We reached out to Asquith for comment, but so far no response. UPDATE: The Forbes piece, that the airspace would shut down, turned out to be wrong. 

It might not even have been the product of original investigation. The story is claimed to be a follow on to one published by an obscure aviation site, fliegerfaust.com. (This is a correction; our original reporting had it the other way around.) Here's a Twitter screenshot of Asquith's post, which didn't repeat several of fliegerfaust.com's  odd and speculative theories, including that President Trump's cutting off the supply of N95 masks to Canada was a sign that the shutdown story was true. Yeah, we don't get it, either. In text messages someone who identified themselves as fliegerfaust.com's Silvain Faust declined to share any specifics on the story's sources and added that "...if you read my previous articles you would understand," and, "I never and will never mention my sources." Which goes a long way toward explaining why Forbes possibly deleted its follow-on story. 

Several of the points that Fliegerfaust made, like the mask tie-in, seem silly, but some raise legitimate questions it mentioned briefly or did not address, such as, what traffic would be allowed? Obviously, cargo would need to be allowed, but today, a lot of cargo is carried on passenger flights. So, if a shutdown included passenger planes, that would make it hard to get freight delivered, something that needs to happen to keep the economy functioning at anything above crisis levels (if we're not there already). There's also the question of EMS flights, VIP transport, including for politicians and government leaders.

And what about GA? Would we be allowed to fly our small planes? Would all flight instruction cease? Would checkrides go away?

And perhaps most importantly, if this does happen, and to be clear, we have no credible information that it is going to happen, how long would it last? And what would signal the end of the airspace lockdown?

Today another sign emerged that the shutdown is very likely not in the cards. As the federal government has been tweaking details of the CARES act, the $50 billion airline bailout, many of the requirements are focused on airlines maintaining some percentage of their current flight schedules, a clause that makes it hard to believe that they're also working to shut down that same airspace. 

Again, the report proved to be unfounded. If there are any further developments, we will keep you apprised.