so ike is on its way and the houston area airports are closing at 3pm today. what do you do as pilots? do they have you fly all the planes out of houston before it shuts down? does the company give you time to get all your stuff together and evacuate? if all your trips are turns from houston do you just go to another base, or do you plan on having the next week off? just curious how things go down when a major airport like that is closed.

 

Great question - I am also very interested in how airlines manage major disasters and in the past have had questions about contigency plans, etc. Also, do airlines involve a pilots union in their contingencies, or is it the Chief Pilots only that are involved in the planning?

 

I have a buddy just landing in RSW, He called me company said they have a 40hr + layover now. Do they give u time to prepare?, Heck no, you are on your own....

 

all you need in that situation is a change of clothes, a credit card, and a bar within a mile of the hotel.

 

dwn3grn - were you in the wild weasel squadron?

 

No credit cards...always cash. LOL

 

I'm not working but have been trying to keep an ear to the ground about how the company is handling things. Apparently operations (dispatch, scheduling, etc) have been moved to a backup facility and aircraft that were operating in the IAH system were just turned to their overnights this morning/early afternoon where they will stay until Sunday. There were also some ferry flights to Amarillo and Shreveport with employees and their families. CAL did a similar thing with their flights and sent 1 or 2 767s to El Paso for employees and families who wanted to get out of Houston. That's about all I've been able to learn so far. It'll be interesting to see how they recover the operation. What's also interesting to think about is that even though Houston is out of commission until Sunday at the earliest there are still 2 other hubs that will be operating a more or less full schedule and a large portion of the airline will need to continue to operate.

 

With 40 hours, even that should not be an issue

 

VERY true. Ron Mexico learned the hard way. ALWAYS CASH!!!!!!!!!!!!I'm sprung now.

 

Basically all of the flights that were supposed to return to the hub tonight and tomorrow are staying at the outstation until sunday, along with their crews. Those aircraft that were going to be left in Houston were evacuated last night and earlier today to various outstations.

As far as the company giving us time to prepare, well, it's an airline. They're looking after their own flight operations first. Most of us were able to evacuate with an airplane (I was out last night), but there are plenty of people who were expected to remain on reserve during all of this. Those people (rightly) got the hell out on their own accord without any word from the company. The IAH chief pilots were great about getting people released from duty, but "officially" the company "couldn't guarantee" that everyone could be released.