MIAMI -- Tourists fleeing Miami in advance of Hurricane Irma faced
long but orderly lines at Miami International Airport as airline workers tried
to accommodate them on the remaining flights out.
The impending storm cut short the vacations of many
visitors, including William Menegazzo, a 27-year-old physician from Porto
Allegre, Brazil. He only managed to spend one night on South Beach before
packing to leave.
"We arrived yesterday and we were planning to stay
until Sunday," said Menegazzo, who was standing in line at an American
Airlines counter to try to catch a flight to Mexico.
Menegazzo, who stayed at the Pestana Miami South Beach, said
with a wry smile that his one-night stay was "fantastic."
Also hoping to catch a flight out were Mikko Koutaneimi and
Heta Poikolainen, two tourists from northern Finland who were planning a two-week
stay at the Grand Beach Hotel in Surfside. They headed for the airport after
only a few days, however, as Irma's predicted path began to overlap with
Florida.
Koutaneimi said that the earliest Air France could guarantee
their departure was Sunday, when the storm is expected to be at full force in
Miami. They were queued up at American in hopes of getting a flight to New York
with a return in a couple of days.
September is the trough of annual tourism in South Florida,
but nonetheless there were 776,551 international air arrivals during the month
last year and Miami's 53,983 hotel rooms were 68.4% full, according to data
from the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. An average of 1,121
flights a day depart Miami's airport for 52 domestic and 98 international
destinations.
The airport said that once sustained winds hit 55 miles an
hour, the FAA control tower will close and flights suspended until the storm
passes. That isn't expected to happen until early Saturday.
Eli, a 42-year-old engineer from Montreal, had planned a
week-long dive vacation in the Turks and Caicos but cut it short after only
three days when Irma loomed on the horizon. He caught a flight to Miami only to
face much the same predicament. "This thing keeps following me," said
Eli, who declined to give his last name.
Although he has a confirmed flight out of Fort Lauderdale on
Sept. 7, Eli was at Miami International hoping to snag a standby fare to
Montreal a day earlier. "I kept on saying, 'Irma is not going to happen,'"
he said.