Eerie looking at FR24 view of Florida (from here in the UK) currently (2300L Sat).

Pretty much nothing moving, or overflying from about Orlando/Tampa area south to Cuba.

Only thing I did see a few hours ago was a NOAA P-3 heading south, to around the north coast of Cuba, then looping back north.

Take care over there.

That line was a gaggle of C172s from Embry Riddle University, heading up to Auburn to take shelter.

Wycombe,

I’ve been doing the same thing over the past few days. You can tell where Irma is by the dearth of air traffic, with just the NOAA E-3 or NOAA49, a GIV, going round in circles!

Surely that would damage the runway even more than the hurricane had? Unless there was subsurface pavement damage, I wouldn't have thought strong wind and rain would do anything to the runway itself; maybe a bit of flying debris damage. Dropping tonnes of pallets doing 100kts on it, on the other hand...

No, they dropped LAPES in fields, on runways, no problem. It just slides along to a stop. The Green Berets wanted to be put in cages with seats and LAPES'd. The demo with dummies in the seats tumbled. It was a C-130 evolution and I'm not sure if the RAF did it.

I don't think NOAA has any E-3's (aircraft or otherwise, they don't have enlisted troops in their uniformed service). :=

Looks like NOAA 42 (aka "Kermit"), a WP-3D, just hurrevac'ed from the NOAA Ops Center at Lakeland, Florida to New Orleans (LAL-MSY).

Mea culpa Airbubba,

My brain thought 'P' but my finger somehow typed 'E'.

I've been around long enough to know the difference between a Boeing and a Lockheed product! ;)

Not even sure why I typed E-3, I did of course mean P-3 (or Lockheed Orion/Electra if you prefer!)

Well, 'E' is close to 'P' on the keyboard:E

Kind of ironic that that airframe that once had a tendency to shed wings at altitude is strong enough still to fly through these massive hurricanes 50 years later.

Your quote of him is being nothing like a scientist. Grumpy old people.

Absolutely! Once they got that pesky flutter thing fixed it showed itself to be a very robust airframe. (Apologies if it seems I'm making light of it; I'm not, and I am quite aware people died until the issue with the Electra was understood and repaired.)

We had an Electra Captain at EAL that showed up at the plane wearing a parachute! There were a lot of old Electra guys in BOS and they loved the plane. Last mainline plane flown VFR during ATC slowdowns prior to PATCO in '81.

Actually the problem was weak engine mounts which allowed the turbo props to go into a ' whirl mode" due to gyroscopic action which reached the natural frequency of the whole wing structure- not really flutter as usually defined. Boeing had supplied a hydraulic driven rotating unbalanced weights system to drive wings into flutter mode during test flights- what that proved was that the wing was much stiffer than expected such that the usual flutter exitation modes had little or no effect.

The basic fix was to strengthen and redsign the engine mounts. There are several reports/books writtten about the issue and some of the sphincter tightening tests run at over max speed in VERY turbulent weather of the sierra wave and then turning on the unbalanced weight vibrators out on the wing tips .

Of course there has always been the ' argument ' that a more flexible wing might- repeat MIGHT- have avoided the issue initially.

but in any case the fix proved more than satisfactory- but killed the commercial version of the electra ..

I thought that the number of wing ribs was increased in the Lockheed Electra Action Program that fixed all but the public relations part of the problem.

I read through the LEAP report - seems that "damaged powerplant installation" was a key - some discussion of repeated 'hard landings' damaging the mounts and the supporting braces was a suspicion but didn't address the design flaws in the first place. Makes me curious if as the new turbo-prop entry into the market, 'hard landings' were part getting used to type. I'm sure there were some stiff hits when jets hit the market due to spool up time.

Always wondered how the other props rode - only experience was a number of DC-6 trips between LaGuardia and Cleveland but I kind of remember the wings as being rather stiff - little bending and we did hit some really awful turbulence going through fronts and storms over the PA mountains. Watching the wings flex a couple years later on my first DC-8 and 707 flights, thought sure they were going to fall off so I'm guessing my prior prop flights at a young age set some internal expectation that wings shouldn't flex.

Don't think they added ribs but did add new trusses to some of the ribs. The details are in the LEAP document on the FAA site - http://lessonslearned.faa.gov/ElectraWings/Leap.pdf. Great detail with pictures - some extensive mods.

MIA closed today - perhaps tomorrow.
Miami's main airport doesn't know yet when it will reopen after Irma - Sep. 10, 2017

Scotts post has triggered a question in my head.

Were there any aircraft on the ground in MIA/FLL when Irma struck? If so, how did they fare? I am sure I saw two light aircraft that didn't fare too well at SXM.

Some of the photos of Florida airports I've seen appear to show large aircraft on the ground. Unless they were unserviceable, why on earth would the airlines leave them, there? Best case scenario, they're going to be trapped until the airport reopens, worse case, the plane is damaged or destroyed. That's not even considering the fact that they could have easily sold enough tickets for fill any flights out of the hurricane zone. I really don't get it.

In MRO status.