The pilot announced ‘Mayday’ after taking off from the Musk rocket blast

A SpaceX rocket explosion endangered several passenger planes, with one pilot declaring “mayday” before being forced to fly away from the wreckage.

An experimental rocket ship belonging to Elon Musk’s company disintegrated minutes after liftoff in January, spewing fiery debris across the Caribbean, causing widespread disruption to air traffic.

According to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) documents, the pilots of the three planes, carrying a total of 450 people, were forced to decide whether to fly over the rocket debris field or risk running low on fuel in the water.

Files reviewed by the Wall Street Journal reveal that the Jan. 16 explosion posed a greater threat to planes in the air than was publicly recognized.

The blast rained meteor-like debris for 50 minutes in parts of the Caribbean and could endanger life, according to the FAA.

Fiery trails could be seen shooting into the sky from the cockpits and cabins of commercial aircraft and private jets. If a piece of debris were to hit the aircraft during flight, it could cause serious damage to the aircraft and possible death to the passengers.

All flights eventually landed safely.

It was Musk’s seventh attempt to launch a rocket ship into space to make life on Mars a reality. Reacting to the blast, the billionaire posted on social media: “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”

During the incident, an air-traffic controller told a plane on a JetBlue flight en route to Puerto Rico: “You want to go to San Juan, it will be at your own risk.”

Two others, a private jet and an Iberia Airlines flight, also declared a fuel emergency and traveled through a temporary no-fly zone, the WSJ reported.

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A controller in Puerto Rico said an emergency had to be declared for pilots to land in the capital. A pilot replied: “In that case, we declare an emergency: Mayday. Mayday, Mayday.”

Air traffic controllers working on the issue had to try to divert planes from debris fields, increasing their workload and posing a “potential extreme safety risk,” according to an FAA report from New York’s air-traffic facility.

At least two planes flew too close to each other, requiring controllers to intervene to avoid a collision, according to the documents.

As well as an extreme safety risk, the FAA recorded that SpaceX failed to call an emergency hotline immediately after the explosion. Controllers in Miami first heard of the explosion from pilots who saw the debris, not from Musk’s company.

SpaceX, the world’s busiest rocket launcher, has already launched 11 Starship missions and is planning future flights over Florida, Mexico and the North Atlantic flyway. According to the company, the 400-foot-tall Starship is the most powerful rocket ever developed.

Credit: Marcus Haworth

The explosion shocked the airline industry and US government officials as it affected a growing number of air travel and space operations.

The safety risk of debris is set to increase. The FAA predicts an annual average of 200 to 400 rocket launches or re-entries in the coming years, compared to an average of 24 operations each year between 1989 and 2024.

After the January incident, the agency established a panel of experts to conduct a safety review to examine how to deal with debris risks from spaceflight failures.

FAA officials suspended the review in August, claiming that most of the safety recommendations had already been implemented. The unusual move caught the panelists by surprise.

Since the January explosion, SpaceX has conducted four more Starship launches, two of which were successful, while two failed.

During a test in March, the engines failed shortly after liftoff, sending the rocket spinning out of control and exploding in mid-air. In May, the rocket went out of control and broke up near its intended splashdown location in the Indian Ocean.

The company plans to launch a new, more powerful version next year. Musk already predicted trouble. In a podcast in September he warned that the Rocket “could have some early teething pains because it’s such a radical redesign”.

The Telegraph has contacted SpaceX for comment.

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