[Update: A good friend made the following comment earlier this week: "50 inches of rain is 50 inches of rain -- whatever you do, what ever you plan, you don't plan for 50 inches of rain. Despite that the water evacuation system for the city of Houston works as planned... but 50 inches of rain is 50 inches of rain, even with the best planning there will be massive flooding. Houston is ridiculously flat, there is simply no technology (or even green spaces) that can deal with 50 inches of rain"]
Last Friday I friend was flying to central America via Houston -- as NOAA was announcing that Harvey (which made land fall as a cat 4 hurricane) was approaching the coast of Texas, and where Houston, although not at the centre of the storm, was on the leading edge.
United the airline that was routing her via Houston would not change her flight, that as long as the airport was not closed -- they would continue to route passenger via that airport. The business of flying passengers is all about logistics, and there is now a rule, it seems, that airline are no longer about logistics and planning, but rather about getting bums on seats, not thinking at all about the future problems that they may have. Instead of being happy that a passenger was proactively trying to re-route and allow more seats on flights that were bound to be over full, the airline took a very contractual view of the problem: They denied that the hurricane was a problem!
Now of course all airport around Houston are closed, and will be for the next 3-4 days -- getting all the passengers out of Houston will take up to 10 days -- that's a lack of planning! It is unclear what gave rise to this kind of thinking, at one level its obvious that some nervous flyers will always find an excuse to "re-route" maybe even costing the money to the airline when in fact there is no reason to re-route the passenger. However, this was not the case.
I understand that after Wilma hit the coast of Texas in 2008, there was some discussion about making some preparation, nothing was ever done, in fact, the Globe and Mail today discussed the fact that instead 54,000 km2 of wetlands were drained to make for housing development in the Houston area (yeah I know the number does seem to make sense...but I checked twice), lets just say that not only were wetlands destroyed (reducing the land's ability to absorb rain water, but that housing was built on land that was "prone to flooding".
Anyway, my friend eventually bought a new ticket that would route here via a different transfer point, which took her out of the storm area...by the way here flight from Houston was actually not cancelled, but very shortly afterwards (Friday afternoon) most flights out of Houston were grounded...
Last Friday I friend was flying to central America via Houston -- as NOAA was announcing that Harvey (which made land fall as a cat 4 hurricane) was approaching the coast of Texas, and where Houston, although not at the centre of the storm, was on the leading edge.
United the airline that was routing her via Houston would not change her flight, that as long as the airport was not closed -- they would continue to route passenger via that airport. The business of flying passengers is all about logistics, and there is now a rule, it seems, that airline are no longer about logistics and planning, but rather about getting bums on seats, not thinking at all about the future problems that they may have. Instead of being happy that a passenger was proactively trying to re-route and allow more seats on flights that were bound to be over full, the airline took a very contractual view of the problem: They denied that the hurricane was a problem!
Now of course all airport around Houston are closed, and will be for the next 3-4 days -- getting all the passengers out of Houston will take up to 10 days -- that's a lack of planning! It is unclear what gave rise to this kind of thinking, at one level its obvious that some nervous flyers will always find an excuse to "re-route" maybe even costing the money to the airline when in fact there is no reason to re-route the passenger. However, this was not the case.
I understand that after Wilma hit the coast of Texas in 2008, there was some discussion about making some preparation, nothing was ever done, in fact, the Globe and Mail today discussed the fact that instead 54,000 km2 of wetlands were drained to make for housing development in the Houston area (yeah I know the number does seem to make sense...but I checked twice), lets just say that not only were wetlands destroyed (reducing the land's ability to absorb rain water, but that housing was built on land that was "prone to flooding".
Anyway, my friend eventually bought a new ticket that would route here via a different transfer point, which took her out of the storm area...by the way here flight from Houston was actually not cancelled, but very shortly afterwards (Friday afternoon) most flights out of Houston were grounded...
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