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When a Hurricane Threatens, Airplanes Go Into Hiding

In just a few hours, New York City's airports should be back up and functioning somewhat normally after a weekend of shut down due to the threat posed by Hurricane Irene. Thankfully the airports are still around at all, since New York did not get as hard as everyone expected, even though JFK lies way out in the mandatory evacuation zone.

In order to get flights heading out on schedule, airlines must fling their planes back to the airports in the first place. You see, when a severe storm approaches such as a hurricane, an effort is made to clear the airport of planes and put them into "hiding" at other airports as much as possible. Nobody wants to see an overturned or damaged multi-million dollar flying machine after some wind and rain.

During Irene, one of the airlines most transparent about their emergency procedures was JetBlue. Not only are they being proactive about rebooking customers on Twitter (just have a look at their feed), but their COO Rob Maruster shared this pic of a deserted Terminal 5 at JFK with storm clouds overhead.

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