Airlines to help evacuate New Orleans
 

Several airlines are providing aircraft to help airlift refugees from New Orleans, including Alaska, American, United, ATA, AmericaWest, JetBlue, US Airways, Southwest, Northwest, Continental, Delta and American, and some un-specified charter carriers:

New York Times Story

(you may have to register to see the story, but it's free)

Does this mean that the airport is relatively operational then? Perhaps the US gov should stop sending AMC aircraft to Iraq and divert a few to New Orleans and actually help its own people for a change!

Louis Armstrong Airport (MSY) is on the west side of New Orleans, as this map shows. I haven't been able to find a map of the flooded areas that reaches this far west, except for this rather small one, which is from a few days back.

The terminal building is being used as an ER by a mobile medical team. Some of the staff are Tsunami veterans.

MSY is operational with one runway open, daylight, visual approaches only. The terminal building is essentially a makeshift hospital at this point. Many of the carriers have been flying in 1-2 flights a day with charter flight numbers over the last several days. No jetways are useable.

Baton Rouge (BTR) is 70 miles away and most carriers have added mainline aircraft service to that airport. Formerly, many of the flights into BTR were with CRJs and EMBs . BTR will be THE main New Orleans passenger airport over the next several weeks with MSY expected to be used for relief flights.

The situation is severe and the retospective analysis will be going on for months.

Satellite picture in the daily mail today shows the airport to be out of the affected area. Sorry, I couldn't find a link online.

I would be ready to cut short my vacation in the UK to help in any way I could. Anyone know of organization that needs an aviation old timer…or even just another pair of hands? LR

How about using NAS New Orleans (NBG: to me, it means Navy Bugs & Gators)? Years ago it had an AFRES or ANG squadron of either F-16s or A-10s. One of our pilots on the Safety Committee was a pilot there.

Is it still operational?

Air Canada are dedicating an A321 to the ATA programme.

I've checked some of the scanner feeds:

NAS New Orleans, aka "Belle Chasse" has been active on the radio during the emergency, (also using callsign Navy New Orleans).

Can't speak as to whether it's been operational after the hurricane -- I imagine it has -- but it certainly was before. The big problem right now is the "last mile": getting the information out of the streets, and the aid in.

The internet feed I get is largely limited to ANG and USCG communications, with a bit of NO air traffic (advisories, not control; provided by AWACS), but you do hear Belle chasse come up quite a bit.

Anyway, traffic is going through MSY, and there's plenty of calls for gonzales regional airport, with traffic landing/departing rwy 35, but that's just because their frequency (123.00) is also listed on the "scanned frequency list" as:
123.00000 Air to Air.

Anyway, for the Hurricane Katrina radio information (including all known internet feeds), look here: here, and for those trying to process that information, look here .