Hurricanes and airplanes
With the destruction in Florida this week , I started thinking. (Sometimes dangerous). Does AOPA or another group have an alert system in place so that if a hurricane is coming, there is advance notice on these, a person with an airplane at an airport in its path could move the plane to a safer location, get picked up by a volunteer pilot and returned to his airport of origin so he/she could evacuate cars or household property without worry about the plane being left behind. 
4 Replies

@Robert Fogle
You could do this now by setting up an airport group in your mobile contacts apps with their cell phone numbers. Once you have done it on one cell phone, you can share the group with others as a vcard. Since the FBO usually has cell phone numbers for all the aircraft based at an airport, you should be able to work with them to set up an alert text group.

Setting up a central website and database to do this involves a lot of programming and maintenance even for AOPA. I did it as a limited concept project on my personal web site using PHP and MySQL and concluded that it's much easier to do with existing technology using contact groups.

Gary Sobek
14 Posts

@Robert Fogle
 

In the EXPERIMENTAL aircraft world, our VAF group will post inland hangar space for people to move their aircraft to till after the hurricane threat is over.

 

 

@Robert Fogle - I live in Montgomery County Maryland, and the county has a special alert text message system for weather and traffic.  You may be able to find something similar in your state or county.  I also believe that Weather.gov has some type of notification system, but I do not know if you can sign-up for a specific location.
 

Good idea Robert.  This would be used more by small inexpensive airplanes so EAA would also be a good group to support this.  Many hobby owners like me and my Swift do not buy hull insurance so all the relocation costs are immediate.