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Old Sep 4, 2019, 1:34 pm
  #6  
StuckInYYZ
 
Join Date: Jan 2015
Posts: 2,889
Originally Posted by AllanJ
Do airports announce closures unnecessarily soon?

Example: Friday evening Orlando Int'l (MCO) announced closure effective 2AM Sunday due to Hurricane Dorian. They later rescinded the closure on Sunday morning. As of Monday morning the hurricane was still a day away and airport operations were normal except for whatever flights were cancelled by individual airlines..

Of course more passengers scrambled to rebook flights compared with not having an airport closure announced that soon. After all, if the airport was going to be closed then one would immediately conclude that all flights (here, on Monday) would be cancelled.

Or should both airlines and passengers feel free to wait awhile before cancelling flights and rebooking reservations, respectively?
Let's discount Dorian for the moment (it was a moving target.... few people expected it to move so slowly Saturday...)...

That said, the question is, do you really want thousands of people milling around should the storm change and stomp on the airport? Warning away a day or two ahead is a prudent way to give people sufficient time to safely get away. If the airport can get a few ferries away as well, sure, do it, but I'd rather have a two-day head start to get away from a potential hurricane (especially a CAT 5). Remember you're looking at roughly 21 million people to move out of the area. You don't know how many are going to shelter-in-place and how many are going to find shelter elsewhere. I've never been to MCO.I don't know if the roof is primarily glass or open concept or whatever so I can't say how well it would weather a hurricane of any size. Give everyone sufficient time to get away. A ticket can be re-scheduled, a person getting hit by debris is probably not a good thing.
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