Planes and hurricanes

My wife is supposed to fly out this Thursday am to California so she doesn't think that will happen. I told her that she would be surprised at it takes to cancel flights. Does anyone know what the airlines use to determine whether or not they cancel flights? I was thinking she might still fly but they have to cross from east to west and I imagine it also depends on the size of the storm.
 
It's more the airports than the airline. I remember landing in Tampa rwy 27 with winds 35 to 55 knots. But now the airports close so employers can be safe.
 
55 knots you say? That would make a nice tail wind for the Skylane!
 
Water is a whole different ballgame. Storm surge is the killer. It always amazes me to see people on the barrier islands staying put to ride it out. There are videos from Ian of 2 story buildings floating down the street.
All you gotta do is move 5-10 miles inland and you are perfectly safe. Florida is very practiced at this, and has tons of public shelters and hotels. Orlando has nearly infinite capacity to absorb visitors, and takes very little damage because of location.
Almost all houses are reinforced concrete block and slab construction, so basically bomb shelters. It is rare for anyone to be injured or killed in a residence not on the water.
 
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WDD said:
55 knots you say? That would make a nice tail wind for the Skylane!
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Circumnavigation Hurricane Jeanne in 2004 on the return flight from N GA to S FL.

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And the air was perfectly smooth at 7,000’

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Mikey52 said:
It's more the airports than the airline. I remember landing in Tampa rwy 27 with winds 35 to 55 knots. But now the airports close so employers can be safe.
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The airlines also take preemptive action as well to move valuable crew and aircraft out of the affected area. The last thing they want is to have a multi million dollar aircraft damaged by the storm, or worse, their name and logo be in all of the media photos in the aftermath.
 
kaiser said:
aww man, not this weekend!
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This one will all over by the weekend. Looking at a Thursday 8pm landfall. Still holding the track far enough east of us that we'll probably ride it out. But we'll see what happens tomorrow.
 
Tampa and gulf side will get the storm. Atlantic side seems much better?
 
francisco collazos said:
So i've been thinking of purchasing a plane and of course I do not have a hangar nor do I anticipate i will have one in the near future due to lack of hangars in my area. But I was thinking and I was curious what people do here in Florida when a hurricane is coming? Do you fly the plane out of state, try to get into someones' hangar or tie the plane down really good and sweat it out.
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Yes be prepared to fly away before the bad weather
 
donjohnston said:
This one will all over by the weekend. Looking at a Thursday 8pm landfall. Still holding the track far enough east of us that we'll probably ride it out. But we'll see what happens tomorrow.
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Yeah but it'll be near Arkansas during the weekend - where I'll be flying towards
 
WDD said:
55 knots you say? That would make a nice tail wind for the Skylane!
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Don’t forget it’s just not the wind, but storm surge….last I heard was predicted to be 9-10’.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Storms approaching the Gulf side of Florida at an oblique angle can be tricky. A few degrees change in heading can shift landfall hundreds of miles north or south.
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Yep. In 2004 we thought Charlie was going to strike further north, but it hooked inland near Venice and slammed us hard right through the middle of the state. It was still a cat 4 when the eye went over my house, and we're way inland, between Lakeland and Orlando.

That was a rough year. Three storms went through the middle of the state, and the intersection of their paths was about 12 miles from my house. Fortunately we only had minor damage, but we were without power for a week or more with each one.

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Hurricanes aside, I HATE seeing any aircraft tied down out in the weather. My sympathy goes out to those who can’t get a hangar. It took me a long time to get one, but I didn’t buy a plane until I had a hangar lined up. Many people tie down in the weather, but there are so many bad things that happen to aircraft out in the weather. Usually nothing sudden, but general degradation over time. I know lots of people just let them deteriorate with no worry, but I don’t understand how anyone can stand by and watch it happen.

I even hate to tie down in the weather for any period of time when I travel, but it’s tough to avoid. We have a beach house in Galveston, which is a tough, 6 hour drive from where we live, but an easy hour and a half flight. We have a family get together there for a week at July Fourth every year and I usually just tie it down in the salt air for a week and bear it. This past Fourth, Beryl was headed for the Gulf with a slight chance of hitting Galveston. I decided to gut out the drive rather than risk being tied down in a Hurricane or cutting our family time short in order to get the plane out of harms way. It turned out to head in on the day we were going to leave. To your question, in my mind, the only acceptable solution is having a hangar available far enough from the coast to be as safe as possible.

My $0.02,
 
MBDiagMan said:
My sympathy goes out to those who can’t get a hangar. It took me a long time to get one, but I didn’t buy a plane until I had a hangar lined up.
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Unfortunately, I've encountered a fair number of places which won't let you sign up for a hangar unless you already have a plane. My poor plane is going to be outside for the first time in a long time because the local waiting lists are years long and I had to move here. I'm thinking of starting a motorcycle gang that goes around airports checking to see if people are using their hangars for airplanes or for storage, and "encouraging" the storage types to get the hell out. Haha!
 
My airport KPUJ just finished building about 24 T hangars. They were all sold / spoken for 2 years ago. On the positive side we now have available tie down spots.
 
Half Fast said:
Yep. In 2004 we thought Charlie was going to strike further north, but it hooked inland near Venice and slammed us hard right through the middle of the state. It was still a cat 4 when the eye went over my house, and we're way inland, between Lakeland and Orlando.

That was a rough year. Three storms went through the middle of the state, and the intersection of their paths was about 12 miles from my house. Fortunately we only had minor damage, but we were without power for a week or more with each one.

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I was here that year. My house is right under the A in Tampa on the map. When we went to bed the night before Charlie, the storm track was directly over my house. In the morning it shifted east about 50 miles.
Jeanne dropped a lot of trees. The ground was still waterlogged from Frances a week earlier, and the roots of many live oaks pulled up. The trees tore down many power lines, and we were without power for a week. Ever since then the county has been ruthless about trimming limbs along the roadways.
 
AvNavCom said:
Unfortunately, I've encountered a fair number of places which won't let you sign up for a hangar unless you already have a plane. My poor plane is going to be outside for the first time in a long time because the local waiting lists are years long and I had to move here. I'm thinking of starting a motorcycle gang that goes around airports checking to see if people are using their hangars for airplanes or for storage, and "encouraging" the storage types to get the hell out. Haha!
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I understand that perfectly! By the square foot, most any hangar is a bargain as storage space goes. There seem to be no shortage of Airport managers or city councils that won’t enforce their airworthy aircraft only rules. My current manager is the nicest guy you’ll ever meet, but he will give someone a little time with a non airworthy aircraft in a hangar, but if they don’t heed the warning, he kicks them out politely, but VERY firmly. We have one of the very best GA airports in the state. Funny how it works that way. He has been the manager since the airport was built about twenty years ago. I dread the day he retires.
 
Here in houston, anything over a cat 1, i'm flying birdy out.

the house is as prepared as it'll ever be, should i sit here and watch it for some reason ? the cars have a garage.
plus flying out is Way pref to getting stuck on a highway. took us 24 hours to get from houston to dallas a few years back.

as for hangar or tie down, i say damned if you do damned if you don't, between flooding, collapse and debris something is gonna get your plane no matter what.

also from the 4 or 5 hurricanes i've been thru in florida and texas, the weather seems to be pristine up until about half a day before the hurricane strikes, maybe a day
 
Years ago hurricane Bob was coming, and my friend was able to put his cherokee into a large hangar at Otis. Aircraft that were tied down outside were fine. Unfortunately, a section of a hangar wall opened up allowing wind into the hangar. An unsecured toolbox was pushed into his plane causing several thousand dollars in damage.

so, getting your aircraft into hangar isn't necessarily perfect protection.
 
Bob Noel said:
so, getting your aircraft into hangar isn't necessarily perfect protection.
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I can confirm that.

About a dozen planes were damaged in hangars during Michael. Most were planes that relocated here to get away from the storm.
 

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donjohnston said:
I can confirm that.

About a dozen planes were damaged in hangars during Michael. Most were planes that relocated here to get away from the storm.
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That looks like tornado damage. Sometimes the only sure protection is not to be there.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
That looks like tornado damage. Sometimes the only sure protection is not to be there.
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It was a Cat 5 hurricane. The weather equipment was lost after recording sustained winds at 100kts. Where there tornado's embedded? Maybe. Kinda irrelevant to those people who lost their aircraft.
 
donjohnston said:
It was a Cat 5 hurricane. The weather equipment was lost after recording sustained winds at 100kts. Where there tornado's embedded? Maybe. Kinda irrelevant to those people who lost their aircraft.
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Damage looks very localized.
 
donjohnston said:
Localized? About 75% of the trees in two counties totaling 1,200 square miles were destroyed. I guess if you think about it from a global scale that’s “localized”.
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Looking at the picture, the 1 hangar is destroyed, but others look fine.
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
Looking at the picture, the 1 hangar is destroyed, but others look fine.
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Of the 4 large hangars on the field, 1 was completely destroyed (farthest south), 1 partially destroyed (about 100yds north of the destroyed hangar), 1 took some damage (next to the partial partially destroyed hangar) and the last was unscathed. Of the four rows of T-hangars, all of them took damage, The ones to the south got the most damage.

But if it makes you happy, okay, it was a tornado.
 
donjohnston said:
Of the 4 large hangars on the field, 1 was completely destroyed (farthest south), 1 partially destroyed (about 100yds north of the destroyed hangar), 1 took some damage (next to the partial partially destroyed hangar) and the last was unscathed. Of the four rows of T-hangars, all of them took damage, The ones to the south got the most damage.

But if it makes you happy, okay, it was a tornado.
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Then it was one of the biggest tornadoes in history.

My sister moved to Panama City a month before Michael hit. That storm may have been the one that enlightened the world to the term "rapid intensification". She says they went to bed with a number one, but they woke up with a number five. Almost every business in PC was closed for months or years. Fortunately for my sister, they had just had their house built and they exceeded even the toughest current building codes. But they still lost a section of roofing tiles. Their "Cat 3 hurricane rated" lanai was 50% destroyed. their dock was no-where to be found and their whole-house generator was blown off the slab and moved about 15 feet. Panama City is about 250 miles from my house on the East Coast of Florida and we sustained damage. Several of my neighbor's docks on the Intra-Coastal waterway were destroyed. And some of the older, larger hangars at KOMN belonging to the flight school were destroyed.
 
ateamer said:
If we have to evacuate for a storm, the plane will stay and we’ll drive. Our hangar is only five years old, so it’s built to the current codes and rated for 150 MPH wind.
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Just make sure all the structures around you are built the same. What always seems to get properly built hangars in a hurricane are the junk hangers crashing into them!
 
Jeff767 said:
Just make sure all the structures around you are built the same. What always seems to get properly built hangars in a hurricane are the junk hangers crashing into them!
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We’re in an airpark, so the hangars and homes are all 50-75 yards apart. That’s probably far enough, but hopefully we’ll not have to find out. At least the structures on each side of us are new enough and built like tanks.
 
I’m in Fernando Beach this week.

I went ahead and rented a hangar space at Fernando Municipal Airport tonight for when the wind comes in.

Ironically, where I came from - KPUJ in ATL area - is having worse weather. Heck, they just closed the FBO through Friday.
 
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Eye passing West of Tampa now, so looks like we are safe.

Up to Cat 4 now, and headed for Tallahassee area. Fortunately that area of the coast is sparsely populated, and the terrain will absorb the storm surge. Looks like Helene will be a mess but not a killer.
 
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