San Diego Airport UAS Halt: FAA FOIA Drop Details North Island ‘Preparing to Engage’

DOCUMENT DROP · Event: 4 Sept 2026 · FOIA published: 3 Nov 2026. The airport disruption is two months old. The news today is the FAA paper trail released under FOIA and posted by The Black Vault — not a fresh shutdown.

CASE FILE RW-DAILY-2026-1105-AM

Subject: Suspected unmanned aircraft (UAS) and weather-balloon activity near San Diego International Airport (SAN); FAA Mandatory Occurrence Reports and ATC audio; Naval Air Station North Island report of an unauthorized drone that military personnel were preparing to engage

Dates: Event 4 Sept 2026 (~1:54–4:30 p.m. Pacific); FOIA request 10 Sept 2026; FAA response 22 Oct 2026 (case 2026-05893); Black Vault publication 3 Nov 2026

Location: San Diego International Airport (SAN / Lindbergh Field), California; vicinity of Taxiway F / departure end; Naval Air Station North Island across San Diego Bay

Status: Flight disruption and multi-pilot UAS reports CONFIRMED in FAA records; North Island “preparing to engage” CONFIRMED as recorded statement; shootdown claim on ATC audio UNVERIFIED; object identity and operator unresolved

See it first

The primary evidence is audio and paper, not video. The San Diego County Sheriff’s ASTREA helicopter obtained a visual of a silver object but, according to the FAA Mandatory Occurrence Report, did not capture video. No public frame of the object itself is embedded here.

Listen to the tower re-recordings released under FOIA and hosted by The Black Vault (do not re-upload as owned media):

• Ground Control (GC): 9-4 GC FOIA.wav (~142.5 MB; file Last-Modified 3 Nov 2026 on the Black Vault host). Working `.txt` / `.srt` transcripts accompany the Black Vault article.
• Local Control (LC): 9-4 LC FOIA.wav (~143.5 MB; Last-Modified 3 Nov 2026).

The FAA’s FOIA letter states that no responsive transcripts were found. The SRT/TXT files reviewed in The Black Vault’s write-up were generated by The Black Vault’s own software and are working transcriptions, not independently authenticated FAA verbatim transcripts. Key timestamps from that write-up (recording clock, not Zulu wall-clock):

| Recording | Approx. time | Content (per Black Vault working transcript) |

|—|—|—|

| LC | ~00:06:39 | Controller: unauthorized drone activity over the runway; departures stand by |

| GC | ~00:11:29 | Speaker: metallic / reflecting light; “almost looks like a silver sphere” |

| GC | ~00:28:40 | Controller explaining delay: drone “hanging around”; cannot depart for safety |

| GC | ~00:46:54 | Speaker: possible two drones; later allowance it “could have been a helicopter” |

| GC | ~00:55:52 | Unverified remark that one over North Island “got shot down” |

Featured image: FAA public-domain airport diagram for KSAN (chart extract). It orients the field and Taxiway layout; it is not imagery of the September incident.

What happened

On Friday, 4 September 2026, as Labor Day weekend travel began, San Diego International Airport publicly confirmed that a drone and a weather balloon had been identified near the field at about 2:00 p.m. local time. Airport spokesperson Nicole Hall told NBC 7 San Diego that the FAA temporarily paused arrivals and departures, that an all-clear came at about 4:30 p.m., and that Airfield Operations would keep coordinating with the FAA, TSA, and local law enforcement. Hall said TSA law enforcement was investigating the drone activity.

NBC 7, citing FlightAware, reported about 420 flights delayed by 6:00 p.m.; FAA figures put average delays near 122 minutes. The Black Vault later cautioned that those figures describe the broader disruption and do not prove every delay was caused solely by the reported objects. Hoodline summarized the same public account as a roughly two-hour ground stop delaying more than 400 flights.

What the public did not have on 4 September were the FAA’s internal Mandatory Occurrence Reports and the tower audio. Those arrived through FOIA.

Timeline

| Date / time | Event | Source |

|—|—|—|

| 4 Sept 2026, ~20:54Z (1:54 p.m. PDT) | Multiple taxiing aircraft report a drone over the runway departure end; all departures stopped | FAA MOR SAN-M-2026/09/04-0004 |

| 4 Sept 2026, ~2:00 p.m. local | Airport / Hall: drone and weather balloon spotted; FAA pauses arrivals and departures | NBC 7; Black Vault summary |

| 4 Sept 2026, ~21:02Z (2:02 p.m. PDT) | FAA traffic-management advisory: arriving aircraft may face airborne holding up to 30 minutes (per Black Vault description of advisories) | Black Vault (citing FAA advisories) |

| 4 Sept 2026, ~21:30Z (2:30 p.m.) | Tower visual: silver object hovering north of runway over Taxiway F after a United flight report; Navy North Island calls about unauthorized drone they were preparing to engage | MOR 0004 |

| 4 Sept 2026, ~21:40Z | ASTREA sheriff helicopter visual; no video | MOR 0004 |

| 4 Sept 2026, ~22:00Z (3:00 p.m.) | SWA1562 reports silver drone ~1 mile off departure end; another SWA report ~8 min later; FAA notes possible same object | MOR 0004; MOR 0001 |

| 4 Sept 2026, ~4:30 p.m. local | All-clear; operations resume | Hall / NBC 7 |

| 4 Sept 2026, by 6:00 p.m. | ~420 delayed flights (FlightAware); ~122 min average delay (FAA) | NBC 7 |

| 8 Sept 2026 | QA findings signed on MORs (J. Koble) | MOR 0001 / 0004 |

| 10 Sept 2026 | John Greenewald / The Black Vault FOIA request received by FAA | FOIA letter 2026-05893 |

| 18 Sept 2026 | MOR print date on released PDFs (Alexis Thomas) | MOR PDF footers |

| 22 Oct 2026 | FAA FOIA response: GC + LC audio; two MORs; no transcripts / facility logs / decisional docs found | FOIA PDF |

| 3 Nov 2026 | The Black Vault publishes records and analysis | Black Vault article |

| 4 Nov 2026 | Paranormal Daily and Projet 22 digest the FOIA drop | Paranormal Daily; Projet 22 |

What the research found

The hooks: a documented pause of SAN operations; multiple independent pilot reports of a UAS near the runway; a tower and ASTREA visual of a silver object; a Navy North Island call recorded in an FAA MOR that military personnel were preparing to engage an unauthorized drone; and an unverified ATC remark about a shootdown. The FOIA package is the story.