Gettin' out of town, part II

Called the (non-federal) tower at Mobile Downtown for my clearance at 14:00
local Tuesday and right away I knew it wasn't just another day. The
departure freq. was Houston Center instead of Mobile radar. With the
hurricane still at least 36 hours away, the FAA controllers at Mobile
Regional had already bugged out and left MOB non-towered and non-TRACON'd.

I knew this would be trouble and it was: We were #3 for departure behind a
FedEx DC-10 and a Lancair and waited with the engine running for 35 minutes
(the tower kept saying "It'll be just a couple more minutes!") until we got
cleared to go.

When I tried to check in with Center, the reason for the delay was obvious.
The freq. was loaded with IFR aircraft trying to get in and out of Mobile
and Gulfport with neither tower open. Center could not hear aircraft on the
ground at either place, so everyone was having to pick up clearances
airborne. The weather was just bad enough that some Part 121 arrivals were
having to wait and cancel on the ground, meaning they had to relay via
airborne aircraft, causing many of Center's transmissions to get stepped on.
It was so busy that I had flown for 20 minutes before I could check in while
relaying a Valuejet(?) IFR cancellation from GPT.

When we got handed off to New Orleans Approach things immediately went back
to normal (the mayor hadn't made his "Everybody panic!" speech yet) and the
rest of the flight to Houston Hobby was uneventful with a nice 15 kt
tailwind.

As you probably saw, the storm went right up the east side of Mobile Bay,
which put it right over my house in Daphne, so I'm hunkered down here in
Houston wondering if I still have an airport to land at or a home to go to.
More later.
--
Dan
C172RG at BFM