My last minute reservation on the last flight out thursday 4PM is still pending ticketing since 10 AM this morning. I called the priority line, and she said that it all looked OK, just a lot of requests..

Anyway, I will head to IAH tomorrow morning early and find out ... If there are any FTers stuck in the galleria area who want to talk hurricane, head over to the DT guest suites and I'll buy the beer.

well, I'm heading back to IAH tomorrow morning, should get there mid-afternoon. I live in the southwest inside the loop... so I'll be moving things away from the windows, taking a few things, and start heading north ASAP.

No gas only a few have gas left on inner city streets. Freeway's are backed up. I had to have a buddy in Chicago Fed Ex me some c and d batteries. I went to 10 stores all out.

Wish us all luck

Cell phone circuits are toast just north of houston (montgomery county), local grocery stores and wal marts are out of bread, bottled water, batteries and canned soup, but there's still plenty of milk, vegetables, pasta and charcoal. Lines are around 15 minutes for gas and an hour for groceries. People are pretty nice about it, lot of laughing and joking with the neighbours. We're not really worried up here..

I45 to dallas was moving around 40 mph around noon, it's at a crawl at the moment-- apparently around five hours from uptown to conroe. If you're leaving town, might have better luck heading for austin or nacogdoches. Hardy and sam houston toll roads will be free tonight through the rest of the weekend to relieve freeway traffic.

Don't get me started. If there is no availability in your special fare class on alternate flights they absolutely won't do *anything* to reroute until your flight is cancelled. At that point, being elite doesn't seem to matter much, as flights fill up fast (they're quite full these days without hurricane cancellations) and elite status means nothing to the standby list.

I knew I'd have problems both ways on my itinerary this weekend. They're only allowing one free change, so I took them up on it this afternoon for my outbound legs I figured that I'd rather have first crack at an alternate itinerary rather than wait until a few planeloads of people are all in the same boat scrambling for the few remaining seats (PHL->EWR and PHL->CLE in this case). There's almost no inventory left for my return other than via IAH. The aircraft is scheduled to arrive at SEA from IAH late Saturday night and depart for IAH at 12:30am Sunday. I doubt very much whether that will happen, but since it's not been cancelled and there's no other inventory other than a few Y seats available SEA->PHL I'm basically screwed.

I'm sorry, but this kind of behavior by CO is unconscionable. I'd contact your favorite journalist and/or public official. You can't try to tweak the last bit of revenue out of your system when there's a Cat. 5 hurricane bearing down on your major hub. You've got to move your pax to safety while you can -- without making them pay extra for the privilege.

Not only that, but by not accommodating people now, when sh*t does hit the fan, that's just going to mean more call volume when they can't handle it. And I understand one of their call centers is in Houston, so if that goes dark or loses communication, they'll be handling more calls with fewer centers.

It's in their best interest to handle anyone now who has a reasonable request, instead of encouraging them to call back again later in the middle of the mess. :rolleyes:

CO will allow me to avoid IAH for $350
 

I'm scheduled to fly through Houston Friday evening. I called the Elite Desk to see what was what and they said they'd "protect" me onto a Northwest flight that'd take me away from harm's way. However, the fee would be $350 ...and the seats would be in coach, even though I'm flying confirmed F on CO. That news after a 20 minute hold with them. (They said they'd waive the change fee once my flights cancel, but not a moment sooner.)

So for now I'll stick around on my scheduled flights and will just play it by ear on other carriers. If availability gets wierd, I'll just fly to a city that has some space, regardless of how remote it is, and rent a car back.

With Hurricane Rita now the third strongest Atlantic Basin hurricane ever recorded (and possibly getting stronger as I write this), you'd think CO would have some better contingency plans in place ...especially with the forecasts in such good agreement this far out.

Well, we don't know just yet where exactly it's going to hit - it could make landfall sufficiently distant from Houston to allow for a relatively quick service recovery...

IAH is a mess in a summer thunderstorm. This is going to be significantly worse.

This would be the perfect story to get into a newspaper.

Once the flights cancel, though, will they still charge you the fee, or just waive the $100? Usually when a flight cancels, you can have whatever you want on that carrier for no additional charge.

National Hurricane Center...

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/grap...648.shtml?prob

Once the flight cancels the other flights will fill up rapidly and you bay be stuck with no good options. I'd book a refundable ticket on the other flight and protect myself.

Well, the good news is there's little chance your flight will be operating Friday night (unless the forecast radically changes) so I guess you'll ultimately get reaccomodated. The bad news is CO's behavior is deplorable. And what do you do if your flight is Friday morning? Fly? Bail? Pray? It's insanity.

Get this -- I was just EUAd on the EWR-SEA flight I switched to for my outbound trip and for the SEA-IAH portion of my return. Of course, there are now six empty seats in F on the SEA-IAH flight as everyone who can find alternate routings in their fare class is moving away from IAH routings.