Originally Posted by fairviewroad

My guess is that the passengers who got the flight were on the northbound Coast Starlight, which had probably already started its journey from California when the tracks were closed. So Amtrak had on its hands a bunch of people stuck in Portland halfway through their journey. Amtrak was left with the choice of bad publicity or spending $$$ on hotel rooms for ??? nights X 100 or more people. Probably cheaper just to buy them all one-way plane tickets.

Obviously Amtrak is not going to be flying people back and forth who were originally booked on the Cascades corridor service. Those are the people for whom Amtrak says "No alternate transportation is available".