KCI Airport reopens after evacuation due to potential bomb threat
Parts of the terminal at Kansas City International Airport (MCI) were evacuated Sunday afternoon as a precaution after the airport received a bomb threat, officials with the Kansas City Aviation Department said. The airport reopened shortly after 2 p.m.
Airport police worked with members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate the potential threat, officials said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
The airport received the threat shortly before 11:15 a.m., said Jackson Overstreet, a spokesman for the Kansas City Aviation Department.
The FBI was aware of the threat and was working with local law enforcement, city and airport officials to determine its credibility, said Dixon Land, a spokesman for the FBI’s Kansas City offices.
Police blocked off the flyover ramp from Interstate 29 that takes travelers to the terminal on Northwest Cookingham Drive.
Chris Henry of Port Orchard, Washington, said she was headed to the airport to catch a 2:49 p.m. flight to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA). They got onto Cookingham Drive to head to the terminal about 12:30 p.m. when they saw a sign saying, “Crash ahead.” Traffic was moving slowly.
They then saw a lot of police cars, far more than what Henry thought would be normal for a police crash. They were diverted and could not access the terminal. Henry said they made it to Paris Street and found a parking lot near the Hertz car rental, where cars were lined up with the engines off.
At about 1:45 p.m., she said traffic was starting to move again and headed to the terminal. Henry later texted that she was able to get to her gate just as her group was boarding.
Rachelle Hodgson was on a flight from Denver to Kansas City when she received a message on her phone that an ongoing security issue had temporarily limited access to the terminal. The plane was able to land.
“We probably waited a half an hour on the tarmac and then we pulled in and came in like normal,” Hodgson said. At one point, officials considered diverting her flight to Oklahoma.
Hodgson said she was facing a 20-minute wait for an Uber.
Passenger Howard Zion said his plane landed about 1 p.m. and they sat on the tarmac for about 1 1/2 hours.
“The pilot let us know that things were backed up and that there was an evacuation at the terminal,” Zion said. “That's all he knew, and he suggested we go online to find out. So that’s when we saw that there was a bomb threat.”
Zion said it took a while for all the people who evacuated the terminal to the tarmac to get back in before the plane could get to the gates. He was able to get his luggage, but then found out the parking garage was still closed. He was told it was “going to be a while,” and no timeline was available.
“I just want to get to my car and go home,” Zion said.
Others had longer waits on the tarmac. One passenger was overheard telling others that her flight waited around three hours.
The airport said on X at 2:07 that the terminal had reopened.
Shortly thereafter, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy tweeted the security incident at MCI was clear and normal operations were resuming. He thanked law enforcement and the FBI for their response.
“The safety of passengers, airport staff, and crew members is always our number one priority,” Duffy said in the tweet.
FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted that the threat was reviewed and determined not to be credible.
It was unclear how big an impact that the bomb threat had on flights into and out of the airport. As of 3 p.m., 144 arriving and departing flights had been at MCI, according to Flightaware.com, a flight tracking website. It was not immediately known how many of those delays were affected by the airport’s closure.
Southwest Airlines Flight No. 1403, for example, departed for Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., about 2:25 p.m. That’s two hours and 20 minutes late, according to Flightaware.com.
The parking garage across from the terminal remained closed as of 3 p.m., while officers worked to clear it. Meanwhile, passengers inside were passing through security smoothly.
This is the second time in recent months that MCI has been evacuated due to a threat.
On Dec. 31, the airport was closed for more than an hour after airport and law enforcement officials became aware of a potential threat in an unsecured area of the airport terminal. That threat was determined not credible and flight operations resumed.
This story was originally published March 8, 2026 at 1:05 PM.
