Any more aircraft in the Florida airspace in the days leading up to Irma's arrival would have been counter productive. There is a point where the airspace is just over-saturated and Wednesday-Friday of last week reached that point.

There were so many aircraft in the Florida skies last Thursday that ATC was enforcing a 40 mile buffer between departing aircraft and eventually went to a full ground stop because of too much traffic. It takes about 8 minutes for a plane to cover that distance and at one point there were over two dozen departing aircraft on the taxiway at FLL alone. Do the math there, those planes (including the one I was on) were spending three hours on the tarmac.

At one point the pilot was on the PA telling us if we got to three hours we'd be forced back to the gate and the back of the line because of the three hour rule. Luckily we got out a few minutes prior to three full hours, but I don't know if the FAA eventually waived the three hour rule for some of the other aircraft behind us.

There was absolutely no capacity for more aircraft in Florida. Getting more wide body aircraft on some of the routes would have certainly been helpful, but I bet Delta was stretched pretty thin as it was and wide body aircraft demand even more crew. As it is they were flying crews in from LAX and beyond just to crew the additional flights. Honestly, DL and the other airlines went above and beyond as it is. I'm certain they all took huge financial losses just to do what they did.

In terms of a wider "official" evacuation plan, I'm not sure what more can be done through the air but I'm a little surprised cruise ships weren't being utilized. I'm certain a number of the ships regularly operating out of FLL/MIA had cruises canceled, utilizing them to load people up and just head out into the Atlantic for 5 days to wait it out would have been a good use of resources.

I also think Florida lacks competent plans to contraflow traffic out of South Florida. I believe the turnpike can be contraflowed, but I-95 cannot. I get that it is incredibly difficult to contraflow traffic (every single on-ramp has to be blocked) and it would require coordination with the states to the north, but there's a lot of wasted roadway on I-95 in situations like this.

All things considered, I think Florida handles things fairly well but had Irma taken her turn north a few ticks to the east, it might have been a real test of the system.

A lot of people I talk to are suggesting US Airports are ill equipped to handle the volume of planes flying in/out of most major airports. In sufficient runways, poor equipment to cope with flights inbound/outbound unlike other major hubs in the world like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, London, Frankfurt, Beijing who manage their airports and traffic well. There are no 3 hour waits. Yes, 45 minutes to an hour can and do happen during peak hours, but otherwise, none of this insane 3 hour delays on the runway just to take off.

It's a prime example of infrastructure that is so outdated.

On DL1818 now. Looks like flight is a go and we might be the first, or one of the first, commercial flights to land at MCO.

edit: pilot said they are loading enough fuel for the return trip to ATL.

http://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/20...-and-food.html

One of many stories.

Wow - if you want an upgrade ATL-LAX........fly the day after a hurricane!
11 open FC seats on my flight.

You are using London as an example? Seriously? We are talking an incredible set of circumstances here with the hurricane. I've flown out of FLL many times and never waited more than a few minutes for taking off. Also, there are numerous counter-examples to your claim as many US airports have been making substantial investments in new terminals and runways in recent years. Off the top of my head -- ORD, DEN, MSP, ATL, DFW, LAX, PHX, DTW, LGA, JFK, and more I'm probably missing.

They loaded too much fuel and we had to dump fuel before landing. Amazing how MCO looks devoid of any airplanes.

Got through to the refunds department. Was told that, because my scheduled flight on 9/10 operated into Savannah, I was not due a refund. I was initially informed that if I rescheduled to SAV by 9/30, they would waive change fee and fare difference. If I rescheduled after 9/30 they would waive change fee. Since I don't have any scheduled travel into SAV at all in the coming months, I was told that my only option would be to use it as a credit and I would have to pay a $200 change fee. Since the ticket was only $250, I would get $50 credit. I told the agent I did not think that was quite fair since DL had canceled all flights on Saturday, the morning flights on Sunday and then all flights on Monday and mine was one of 5 or 6 Delta flights into SAV Sunday afternoon that I was kind of being penalized for not wanting to be stuck in a city that wound up being flooded. I also let her know that I was able to redeposit the miles I used for the return flight to Chicago for 9/13 and that the agent had waived the redeposit fee. The person I spoke to got a Supervisor and they agreed to let me use the ticket value for any DL flight that travels by July 28, 2018 (less a $50 fee because I had used Chase UR points for ticket). Seems really stingy if you ask me - but I will take what I can get. $200 credit is better than nothing I guess.

MCO tweeted a video of DL1818 pulling into Gate 74 and said it was the first commercial arrival back into MCO.

Don't fly Spirit????

Seriously, I am not sure this is the place for support on Spirit, but posts like this remind why I wouldn't fly them if they paid me. There's no way they get my cash!

Anyone know if skyclubs in Florida airports are open?

Cruise ships have been used extensively.

NCL curtailed their itineraries for Escape and Sky and returned the ships to Miami several days early ahead of storm so local FL residents had choice to disembark and secure their property, or remain onboard - and they consolidated the NCL Sky and Escape pax onto the Escape before sending both ships to Cozumel to ride out the storm. They then sent the empty Sky over to St Thomas on an evacuation mission where she is enroute back to Miami with some 2,000 vacationers in STT that needed repatriated to US mainland.

Royal Caribbean had one ship pulled from service and used her to take employees and their families of Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and Azamara and HQ out to sea to safely ride out the storm.

Royal has also taken two ships out of service to carry out evacuation and humanitarian missions.

Additionally, ships that were already in the Caribbean were kept safely away, but have made additional stops to drop off food and humanitarian supplies such as Adventure of Seas which came alongside in St Maarten to drop off clothing, food, water and other essentials - as well as take on a few hundred people (the ship was already close to capacity from her regular revenue sailing - but they "maxxed out" the ships capacity with some extra onloads in SXM) to bring them to Puerto Rico where more flight lift is available to get people back to US.

It's not "just" the airports themselves. We've got an outdated ATC system as well. That's causing an unholy amount of stress on the system up in the Northeast (where JFK/LGA/EWR directly interact, and you can get knock-on issues with PHL and other airports in the region). Witness the sorts of warnings that sprout up in one city because of storms in another. Now, granted some of that is wiggle room to deal with diversions, but still...

Edit: To be clear, also, I wasn't suggesting more aircraft (at least, not at the major airports). I was suggesting forcing the CRJs and Embraers out/to the sides and filling those slots with 757s, 767s, and so on. For lack of a better way to put it (and I think this is actually a fair way to phrase it), you'd have a Delta Connection/American Eagle flight number...incidentally being operated by a Thomas Cook A330 to CLT/ATL. Likewise I'd be thinking of pushing the airlines to run flights basically 24/7 (since more than a few folks would likely have filled an 0300 flight from MCO to ATL last week).

Of course, I am mulling the logistics, and no small part of the problem in general is probably the crew shortages. A crisis waiver of some sort to stretch FA capacity would be one thing, but there's a "pilot problem" which likely limits aircraft utilization.

(Security infrastructure is another thing, but again...waivers are a thing and I'm pretty sure there are some things that could get relaxed, presuming no previous announcement, for 2-3 hours at a go without unnecessarily risking a catastrophe.)

Made a RT ATL-TPA today using the $113 OW fares widely available on Delta to all FL destinations. Comfort plus upgrade going down and FC going back.

Delta the ONLY major carrier flying to TPA today and flying a full schedule at $113 per coach seat. This is a refundable Y fare. Silver also flying props infra FL and some Frontier and Spirit.

Tampa airport ops people welcomed our flight and thanked the DL crew for flying in today.

Weather perfect, airport spotless.

Many grateful people on these planes.

Enjoying PDB on the return flight now.

Here lies the problem.

Why doesn't the federal government upgrade the ATC system's and improve the travel and safety of passenger's?