Hurricane Harvey, which made landfall in southeastern Texas late Friday night, has both local and national implications for aviation in the U.S. The storm caused temporary airport closures and significant disruption to Houston-area airports’ navigation and lighting systems due to widespread flooding. Nationally, there could be a spike in jet-A fuel prices since production of up to half of jet-A has been interrupted at multiple refineries shut down by the storm, as well as the terminals that service those refineries. The Houston Ship Canal, the major gateway for shipping refined petroleum products, has also been adversely affected.
Virtually all of the Houston area's airports had issued Notams for navaids and airport and signage lighting out of service last night, as well as some runway, taxiway and ramp closures due to flooding as the downgraded storm continued to dump rainfall that could reach a total of 50 inches by Friday. Lighting on construction, broadcast, and cell towers throughout the region's airspace had also failed. While Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) have yet to be issued, that appears a certainty today, if for no other reason than an announced visit of President Trump to the area tomorrow.
The FAA also issued a strong warning to drone operators to keep their aircraft on the ground during rescue and recovery operations. “Flying a drone without authorization in or near the disaster area may violate federal, state, or local laws and ordinances, even if a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) is not in place,” the FAA noted on its website.
Numerous area airports were reported closed yesterday, some not scheduled to open until Wednesday. Many of those that remained open were operating without staffed ATC towers. At press time, closures included Bush International (KIAH); Hobby (KHOU), whose surrounding roads were flooded with more than four feet of water; and Ellington Field (KEFD), the epicenter of Coast Guard helicopter rescue operations. The airports at Corpus Christi (KCRP), Beaumont (KBPT), Victoria (VCT) and Calhoun County (PKV) were also reported closed as were both airports serving the Port Aransas area (KTFP and KRKP). Damage at the Corpus Christi and Galveston Airports was reported as minimal and the former was scheduled to reopen today. Houston Executive (KTME), Sugar Land (KSGR), and Hooks Memorial (KDWH) were all reported as open.
The Coast Guard had assembled a wing of eight MH-65D Dolphins from air stations Houston, New Orleans, Mobile and Clearwater at Ellington by Friday, but on Sunday it became clear that the volume of the required water rescues would outrun that fleet and it began bringing in 11 more helicopters, including HH-60 Jayhawks, and two dozen additional air crews. The Texas Air National Guard has based three of its UH-60s at Sugar Land and moved additional helicopters into the area, as did the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Department of Customs and Border Protection. More than two-dozen helicopters were flying water rescues by early Sunday afternoon, but even that number seemed lacking as Houston's 911 system was swamped with 56,000 calls for assistance between 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at 1 p.m.
Refineries that hadn't shut down before Harvey made landfall began doing so on Saturday, including ExxonMobil's massive Baytown, ConocoPhillips' Sweeny, Shell's Deer Park and Corpus Christi refineries belonging to Citgo, Flint Hills and Valero. Collectively the closed refineries are responsible for 20 percent of the nation's gasoline output and 50 percent of its jet-A production. Even if refinery damage is minimal, it might be some time before they will return to pre-storm capacity due to a potentially large number of displaced workers.
Even before the hurricane hit, jet-A prices were moving higher last week in anticipation of the storm. Jet fuel differentials increased last Thursday to levels not seen in three years. Last April, Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for the Oil Price Information Service, told AIN that a hurricane hit in the area “could temporarily send prices sky high.”