I went to Costco making my usual run and it was a zoo. People were coming out with six cases of bottled water in their carts. My colleague was at Sam's and she said people were going nuts as well.

A trip to the grocery store yields scenes of empty water, tuna, peanut butter, and bread shelves. The gas stations are running out of regular unleaded as well.

I guess we all have to wait until Thursday at 2pm Central.

My uninformed guess is that they'll shut down ops beginning perhaps with the last flights Thurs night. They are talking about tropical storm type winds starting Fri afternoon. No matter where it makes landfall...unless it takes an unexpect turn....IAH with see some significant winds.

As someone earlier said...Houston is a mess....last night down in the EFD/Nasa area many gas stations were already closed because of no gas around 8pm. The freeways are a mess...someone said earlier today that to go from the EFD area to IAH was something like 3.5 hours for like 45 miles...normally a 45 min trip. Myself I am now in SAT...and unfortunately not on a MR...more like a Rita Run. If anyone is looking to get out of houston, I found the drive to SAT today not too bad...five hours from Clear Lake to San Antonio...the worst part, of course, is from Clear Lake to Katy

One highly positive experience
 

Well, while most of the posts are negative here, I'll give a thumbs up to my experience.

My cousin and wife are flying IAH-EWR-HKG on bulk "U" fare from a consolidator. They were supposed to fly out Sunday morning.

Just 10 minutes ago, I called the regular international line (they're not elites anymore, and I don't want to abuse the system). First call didn't go through probably due to high call volume out of Houston - a SBC problem, not CO. Hit redial, and in one minute was connected to a rep in SLC after punching "5" for international. No prolonged wait or anything.

Got the date they've wanted Wed 9/28 - same flight same everything. Changed within 45 seconds. I logged back on continental.com, and new flight is reflected and I chose new seats for them. Email confirmation also came through within 3 minutes.

Whole process took 5 minutes, everything went as smoothly as humanly and electronically possible.

Smart move. ^

Make the best of it: grab a bite to eat at Paloma Blanca.

i've been watching this thread with great interest as i'm supposed to fly out of iah on friday at 7.25. not on co, on ua...and they'll 'protect' us in the same way co will protect it's elites, but i'm just waiting to see if the airport remains open long enough for us to go as scheduled.

thanks to you guys for the thread.

if we don't fly, we'll ride out the storm in the northwest part of town :eek:

I had a good rebooking experience as well. I was scheduled LAX-IAH-LGW next Tuesday and decided not to chance it. Was quickly changed to LAX-EWR-LGW. I'm sure the currently pretty empty EWR-LGW flight will fill up soon with rerouting.

Way to go CO!

But the good booking experience seems to depend on whether there are seats available in your fare class. If you get lucky and there are, everything's cool. But if the fare bucket you're travelling in is closed out, it's very uncool.

This is one bad-... cyclone, it's almost enough to make you believe in global warming, but we know that's just an unproven theory. It's gotta be God tryin' to tell us something, and she is pissed! :eek:

Direct Impact on IAH
 

...and for what its worth, the official forecast has shifted landfall just south of Galveston, bringing to Galveston and Houston what Katrina brought to Biloxi and Slidell: the mess of a strong category 4 hurricane.

While its bad for CO to have its hub and its employees in the chaos of one of the worst hurricanes ever, the problems will be further compounded by reduced refinery capacity and likely skyrocketing fuel costs. While some news outlets were saying Katrina would be the deathblow to airlines like CO, this may truly be the deathblow to CO. How can an airline survive when its main hub is impacted by a massive hurricane, its employees are left homeless, and fuel surges to outrageous sums per barrel?

Glad to see some of us are still optimistic.

Amateur weatherman here, but I suspect that the damage to Houston (and CO) will be much less than many of us fear.

NOAA "strike probabilities"
 

NOAA "strike probabilities" (eye passage within 65 nm), updated several times a day as their modeling changes, at:

http://www.wunderground.com/tropical...18.strike.html

Galveston/Freeport now at 19%.

Anyone else at IAH Thursday morning?
 

I'm connecting thru TPA-IAH-SJC
1407 coming in TPA-IAH at 8:20 am
1747 going out IAH-SJC at 9:35 am.

Anyone else going to be around?
1747 was showing 50 seats empty last week, but now everything IAH-SJC/SFO/OAK is A0Y0 all day Thursday.

I wonder if Continental will run all day Thursday...guess we'll find out at 2 pm.

I'm due to arrive around 3pm Thursday, I'm hoping I'll be able to get in, and then drive out :eek:

for what it's worth, i've been watching the local fox affiliate this morning (thu) and one of the reporters claims to have a brother who works for southwest...she said they currently plan to continue to fly through noon tomorrow--if true, could be good news for the rest of us...with hobby being further south, hopefully iah will remain open through early tomorrow also.

different reporter said lines at the airport are shockingly long, she suggested getting there very early.

updated info--my flight on ua tomorrow am has already been cancelled, agent i spoke with said co flights today are booked and tomorrow will likely be cancelled as well, if they haven't been already. worth speaking with a csr before you head for the airport.