Closures and delays ahead as Florida airports brace for Ian.
Florida airports were reporting flight delays, cancellations and even closures ahead of the hurricane force winds expected along much of the state beginning Wednesday morning. Airports in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Orlando had announced the grounding of all their flights as precautionary measures, while others were reporting delays in parts of the state outside the hurricane’s path and its associated watches and warnings. Tampa International Airport — which was in the middle of the hurricane’s projected path as of Tuesday evening — had canceled more incoming flights than any other airport in the United States as of Tuesday afternoon, registering 146 cancellations and 15 delays for the day, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. It suspended all operations as of 5 p.m. Tuesday. At a news briefing on Tuesday morning, John Tiliacos, the airport’s executive vice president, had said the closure would affect 450 flights a day. A team of about 120 employees have volunteered to ride out the storm at the airport, he said. The airport is close to Tampa Bay, so storm surge and flooding are a top concern, he said. “We are talking potentially a lot of water that could be on our airport,” Tiliacos said. He added, “To my knowledge, we have never had a storm of this magnitude that’s impacted us.” The St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport closed even earlier, as of 1 p.m. on Tuesday, with the last flight scheduled to depart at 11:22 a.m. Michelle Routh, a spokeswoman, said the airport, located near the waters of the Old Tampa Bay by the state’s west coast, was in a mandatory evacuation zone and that it would reopen when it “is deemed safe for operations.” The Orlando International Airport, in central Florida, said it would close on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., out of “an abundance of caution,” said Carolyn Fennell, a spokeswoman. “We’ve begun the operations of preparedness for the storm, tying down or removing any equipment on the ground that could become a projectile,” she said. “A lot of our terminals have glass doors, so we put sandbags there, and then we are communicating with the airlines.”<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2022-09-28/general/closures-and-delays-ahead-as-florida-airports-brace-for-ian
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Closures and delays ahead as Florida airports brace for Ian.
Florida airports were reporting flight delays, cancellations and even closures ahead of the hurricane force winds expected along much of the state beginning Wednesday morning. Airports in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Orlando had announced the grounding of all their flights as precautionary measures, while others were reporting delays in parts of the state outside the hurricane’s path and its associated watches and warnings. Tampa International Airport — which was in the middle of the hurricane’s projected path as of Tuesday evening — had canceled more incoming flights than any other airport in the United States as of Tuesday afternoon, registering 146 cancellations and 15 delays for the day, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. It suspended all operations as of 5 p.m. Tuesday. At a news briefing on Tuesday morning, John Tiliacos, the airport’s executive vice president, had said the closure would affect 450 flights a day. A team of about 120 employees have volunteered to ride out the storm at the airport, he said. The airport is close to Tampa Bay, so storm surge and flooding are a top concern, he said. “We are talking potentially a lot of water that could be on our airport,” Tiliacos said. He added, “To my knowledge, we have never had a storm of this magnitude that’s impacted us.” The St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport closed even earlier, as of 1 p.m. on Tuesday, with the last flight scheduled to depart at 11:22 a.m. Michelle Routh, a spokeswoman, said the airport, located near the waters of the Old Tampa Bay by the state’s west coast, was in a mandatory evacuation zone and that it would reopen when it “is deemed safe for operations.” The Orlando International Airport, in central Florida, said it would close on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., out of “an abundance of caution,” said Carolyn Fennell, a spokeswoman. “We’ve begun the operations of preparedness for the storm, tying down or removing any equipment on the ground that could become a projectile,” she said. “A lot of our terminals have glass doors, so we put sandbags there, and then we are communicating with the airlines.”<br/>
