If you’re headed east or north via air, you just got grounded.
Yeager Airport was notified Sunday evening that 19 flights were canceled for Monday as a result of Hurricane Sandy. Airport Manager Rick Atkinson says those cancellations were made as a precaution.
“United made a decision that Charleston was in the possible cone of being affected by the storm,” says Atkinson. “They canceled flights in Chicago and Houston because even though they’re coming from places that aren’t affected by the storm, they felt we may be affected.”
Meanwhile flights are still coming into and going out of Yeager.
“We still have flights to Charlotte and Atlanta, Detroit, Myrtle Beach. So there are flights,” Atkinson said Monday.
Guy Kennedy is from Las Vegas. He was in Charleston this weekend visiting and anxious to get back home.
“It looked real bad, what was going on on the east coast. I wanted to get out of town in a hurry,” Kennedy said in Yeager’s lobby Monday morning.
Mary Pope, of Arnoldsburg, had a flight scheduled to Atlanta and then on to Dallas Monday morning. The first thing she did when she woke up was look out the window to check out the conditions, then she called the airline to confirm her flight was still on schedule. She got the green light because she’s headed west.
“I’m not going towards the storm. I’m heading away from it,” Pope said.
Atkinson says depending on how hard Sandy hits our region and areas east and north, it could take a couple days or even longer for those canceled flights to places like Washington, D.C. and New York to be rescheduled.
Your best bet if you plan to fly out of Yeager or any other airport in the region over the next few days is to call the airline ahead of time and see where things stand.