Tropical Storm Isaac, the 9th storm of the 2012 Hurricane season is sirring up trouble in and around the Gulf of Mexico. Hundreds of flights have been cancelled around Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and more and entire airports are expected to be shut down as Isaac makes its way towards New Orleans, just seven years after Hurricane Katrina hit.
FlightAware.com, a flight tracking site notes that just about all flights to and from New Orleans International Airport and Pensacola Regional Airport have been cancelled on Tuesday. United Airlines and Southwest Airlines are cancelling all of their New Orleans flights. Altogether, 297 flights have been cancelled to/from/within the United States as Isaac approaches and 215 of them alone are to/from New Orleans International. Most of the flights are from Southwest Airlines, with 76 cancellations.
Gulfport-Biloxi International airport in Mississippi will be closed by 12p.m. on Tuesday as well as Mobile Regional Airport in Alabama.
Many of these airlines and airports with cancellations are expected to start running again on Thursday morning.
Florida airports took a heavy hit as Isaac passed the southern tip of the panhandle. Over a thousand flights were cancelled to/from Florida. However Key West airports including Key West International Airport and Florida Keys Marathon Airport have re-opened since Isaac passed. Miami International and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International airports are both operating normally.
On Monday, 434 flights were canceled, but many of them were canceled in the Northeast due to other unrelated weather conditions. However Miami and Fort Lauderdale did have 167 cancellations on Monday.
Earlier in the week,several major cruise ships also had to alter their plans to avoid Isaac.
Isaac is not yet a hurricane, as it only has maximum sustained winds of 70 miles per hour as it swirls around the Gulf, however it is expected to become a Category 1 hurricane by the time it makes landfall late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, with winds randing between 74mph to 95 mph.
President Obama has declared a state of emergency for Louisiana ahead of the storm.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
