Delayed arrivals to El Paso International Airport

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- Arrivals and departures at the El Paso International Airport have resumed, but not without delays to those originally scheduled to arrive in El Paso early Wednesday morning.

This after a Pentagon plan to use a high-energy, counter-drone laser without having coordinated with the Federal Aviation Administration about potential risks to civilian flights prompted Wednesday’s unprecedented airspace shutdown over El Paso, Texas, told by multiple sources acording to CNN.

Those accounts come as the Trump administration has claimed that a Mexican cartel drone crossing into US airspace is what triggered the 10-mile restriction centered on El Paso International Airport.

Late Tuesday, the FAA abruptly issued a temporary flight restriction that immediately grounded all flights up to 18,000 feet around the city for 10 days, effectively shutting down El Paso International Airport.

Hours after the El Paso International Airport resumed, domestic and international flights arriving to the airport have experienced delays ranging from 2 to several hours later than originally scheduled.

ABC-7 spoke with some of the people impacted by these flights once they finally arrived in El Paso.

Gisele Pokorny, one of the passengers on a delayed flight arriving to the El Paso International Airport, told ABC-7 that her flight was originally scheduled to depart from Houston at 10:00 am. 

After hours of waiting, she finally arrived to El Paso around 1 PM. She says she remembers passengers on the plane saying how stressed they were by the delay and that they wanted to get back to their families as soon as possible. Now that she's finally home, one of the first things she plans on doing, is grabbing a subway sandwich.

"I feel way better now that I have arrived. I'm going to take a hot shower and I'm going to eat some subway sandwich. And I'm just going to relax," Gisele Pokorny told ABC-7 during an interview.

Another passenger on a delayed flight arriving to the El Paso International Airport told ABC-7 he arrived hours later on his flight from Denver than originally scheduled.

In an interview with ABC-7, Robert Ahuja said he woke up at 5:30 AM to check the news before his flight. That's when he saw all flights to and from the El Paso International Airport had been suspended. Ahuja says he then spent the next hour on the phone with United Airlines to cancel his flight and get his refund. Four minutes later, they lifted the suspension. Ahuja spent the next 3 hours rebooking his flight to El Paso after canceling it.

All this on his way to Mexico City to see his girlfriend. 

"I would have missed Valentine's Day with my girlfriend, so it would have been a bad time for me," Ahuja told ABC-7.

Some flight originally scheduled to arrive to the El Paso International Airport this morning are now expected to be arrive in the afternoon and even evening hours.