FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Officials and airline patrons of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, closed after being inundated by record rains, anxiously awaited a newly scheduled reopening on Friday.
Authorities said the airport reopened at 9 a.m. on Friday after the lowering of floodwaters and the removal of hazardous debris from runways and taxiways.
Nevertheless, they expected the airport to be a one-runway operation into the weekend as the north runway was fully submerged beneath several feet of standing rainwater in places. The south runway is dry.
The airport, which shut down operations Wednesday after an unprecedented 26-inch rainfall, elected to delay an anticipated predawn Friday opening of 5 a.m. until 9 a.m.
“The delayed time frame is to accommodate first daylight inspections to determine the airfield’s readiness to resume safe flight operations,” the airport said in a late Thursday tweet.
Still, travelers are advised to check with their airlines or a flight tracker before going to the airport.
The airport is a far cry from an airfield, which it was at its founding in 1929 as Merle Fogg Airport, named after a World War I aviator. Now, it is one of the nation’s busiest airports, generating $37.5 billion in annual economic activity and supporting 18,000 direct aviation jobs, according to a history section of the airport’s website.
Mass exit
But on Thursday, thousands of passengers bound for U.S. and foreign destinations had to gather their bags, call relatives or summon public transportation for rides back home or to local hotels after the airport announced there would be no outbound or inbound flights for the remainder of the day.
The reason: authorities said the waters were too high on the north runway and no one knew what type of debris was lurking beneath the surface.
About 10 a.m. Thursday, authorities said, the airport met with airline representatives and informed them that the shutdown that started at 5 p.m. Wednesday would be extended into Friday. Soon, announcements echoed throughout the airport’s four terminals that air operations had been halted for the day.
According to the flight tracking service FlightAware, 667 departures and arrivals at the airport were canceled on Thursday.
“We are hoping and praying we will be able to open up tomorrow morning,” Broward County Mayor Lamar Fisher told reporters Thursday at a curbside news conference.
But he strongly advised passengers against returning to the airport until they received word from their airlines that their flights were ready to go.
A one runway startup
It remained unclear precisely how much air traffic volume would be permitted upon reopening.
“We cannot allow commercial aircraft operations if there is debris, sediment or anything on the runway or a taxiway,” Michael Nonnemacher. the chief operating officer and deputy director of aviation, said at the Thursday news conference..
“It’s a federal aviation regulation that we have to adhere to,” he said.
He added that the cleanup was contingent on “no more rain, number one, and then our ability to get everything cleared and ready to go.”
Since the north runway is in worse shape than the south runway, which is dry, “we’ll be a one runway airport for probably two to three days,” Nonnemacher said.
