WASHINGTON — Passengers boarding Continental's packed flight at 3:30 p.m. Sunday from New Orleans to Houston felt lucky to have escaped before Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast.
But others weren't so lucky as airlines canceled flights in advance of the storm.
That and other episodes, including a cutoff of rail and interstate bus service well ahead of Katrina's arrival in New Orleans early Monday, caused some hard feelings in a city where thousands of residents remained trapped by floodwater days later.
"The thing that disappointed us a great deal were the canceled flights," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco told CNN. "On Sunday morning, they could have been flying people out of here.... A lot of people did get stranded like that."
But transportation officials had explanations.
The airlines say they were acting on their own safety regulations, concern for their airport employees who had to evacuate their own families, and the need to get their aircraft -- which cost $20 million and up -- out of the path of a powerful hurricane.
"We take issue with the argument that we somehow abandoned people to the hurricane," said Jack Evans, spokesman for the Air Transport Assn., a Washington-based trade group for the major carriers.
"All the carriers have their own procedures."
Added Basil Barimo, a vice president of the association: "With the industry in the state it's in, the airlines hate to walk away from revenue."
Delta Air Lines' decision to end its regular passenger air service out of New Orleans just after midnight Saturday was based on assessing the safety of its planes, employees and passengers, the accessibility of the airport and the projected course of the weather, according to Anthony Black, spokesman for Atlanta-based Delta.
"Our goal is to get as many of our passengers out of the city as long as the conditions remain operable," he said.
Other airlines considered the conditions operable longer. American flew its last plane out at 1 p.m. Sunday. And US Airways flew two-thirds of its schedule Sunday, with its last plane departing at 1:30 p.m.
"We made the best decision we could based on the information we had," said spokeswoman Amy Kudwa.
Roy Williams, director of aviation at the New Orleans airport, who stayed at his post through the hurricane, said the facility was open to humanitarian and other crucial flights but that it could be weeks before normal air traffic resumed, even though the runways are dry, and damage was limited to a new section of the airport, where the hurricane sheared off the roof.
