Kathleen Bangs of FlightAware explains how Hurricane Helene has impacted flights for airports across the Southeast region of the United States due to the significant effects of Hurricane Helene.
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00:00This storm will be impacting flights throughout the system. It's Kathleen Bangs from FlightAware.
00:05Kathleen, it's always good to see you. Thank you for making time for us here. Tropical storm
00:08Helene, still bringing some rain, serious flash flooding. Where are the airport impacts right now?
00:16Well, what we're really seeing today is kind of what you'd expect. Tampa still impacted,
00:20Atlanta of course, and Charlotte having the most cancellations. Some people don't realize
00:25Charlotte is one of the top five busiest airports in the world and a huge cargo hub,
00:30so big impacts there. But the airports are open. Yesterday we had Tallahassee and
00:36Tampa and St. Pete closed. All those airports are open right now.
00:40The weekend, will Florida and Atlanta still have delays and cancellations?
00:46Well, what we're looking at, definitely probably still going to see some out of Atlanta as they
00:50recover. Florida, really, Tallahassee is going to be nice tomorrow, but we're going to see some
00:54more thunderstorms move in to Tampa and Miami. That could affect that. We're definitely seeing
00:59impacts around Appalachia, Nashville, up into DC and Baltimore. What really is going to impact
01:05people is not so much the rain as it is going to be the winds. Like today, there's a lot of areas
01:11with 40 mile an hour winds and even higher gusts. And once they get those strong winds, that really
01:16affects an airport operations because it limits what directions they can take off and land and
01:21how many airplanes they can handle. So if you're in an area where there's going to be strong winds,
01:25that's going to be one of the huge impacts. And of course, just for people getting to airports,
01:29if it's hard for you to get to the airport because there's debris or the power's out or there's
01:34flooding, it's going to be the same thing for airport employees. So we're going to be looking
01:38for that to get back on pace. But compared to Ian, Hurricane Ian like two years ago, cancellations
01:44are only running about 50% of what they were then. So already this has had less impact on the airlines
01:50than say, for example, Hurricane Ian. And we understand that with small scale thunderstorms,
01:55the flight paths work around them and it's kind of a shorter term issue. How do airlines make
02:01adjustments with flight plans when a hurricane is on the map? Well, yeah, they're pretty careful
02:07about that, especially now that everybody's flight tracking and they can see where they go.
02:11The big thing that they do is they try to get airplanes out of harm's way on the ground
02:16because even a big Boeing 737, when you have those winds gusting, especially 70, 80 miles an
02:22hour, that can actually lift up the tail of the airplane and swing those planes around into the
02:27jetway, into gates and cause severe damage. So one of the things they do is they get those
02:32airplanes out of the harm's way of where those hurricanes are coming.