Historic rains shut down Fort Lauderdale’s airport for days. The impact is still being felt

One day before Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport closed for nearly two days due to historic rains from what meteorologists are calling a once-in-a-1,000-years storm, the South Florida landmark saw an estimated 53,700 travelers pass through security.

For that day, more than 107,000 roundtrip passengers on Tuesday, April 11, said Arlene Satchell, spokeswoman for the FLL airport and Broward County Aviation Department.

Then FLL closed on Wednesday afternoon. Persistent rains kept the major airport’s operations grounded all day Thursday. And for nine hours Friday morning.

FLL reopened at 9 a.m. Friday, about four hours after initial plans.

READ MORE: Fort Lauderdale airport reopens after days of rain, flooding and stranded passengers

The FlightAware tracker listed 207 inbound and outbound flights that had to be canceled on Wednesday due to the storms. There were 659 canceled flights on Thursday when FLL was closed all day and 253 on Friday for a total of 1,119 flights, Market Watch reported.

Thousands of passengers were grounded, about 64,000 alone on the full-day Thursday closure, Market Watch reported.

According to Flight Aware, as of noon Saturday, FLL had 215 flight delays and seven cancellations.

Economic engine and stats

The airport is one of the chief economic engines in Broward County.

▪ According to an independent consultant’s review for the Broward County Aviation Department’s annual report in 2019 — a busy year before COVID curtailed flying for many in 2020 — FLL’s annual economic impact to the county was $37.5 billion. There were more than 19,000 employees at FLL and pre-pandemic, FLL generated 255,386 direct, indirect, and induced jobs.

▪ In 2020, 16.5 million passengers flew via FLL, arriving and departing, according to FLL statistics. But the numbers rebounded over the last two years, into 2023.

▪ In 2022, as COVID-19 vaccines were readily available and cases declined, 31.7 million passengers went through FLL — down from 36.7 million in high-flying 2019, but up from 28 million in 2021.

Where does FLL fly its passengers?

▪ FLL offers nonstop service to about 98 U.S. cities and 51 international destinations in 24 countries. The airport plans to add nonstop service to London, UK, in May and Tel Aviv, Israel, in September 2023, Satchell told the Miami Herald in an email interview Friday.

▪ The number of flights per day FLL serves depends on the time of year — high vs. low travel season — but for April 2023, FLL has been seeing nearly 700 flights daily so far, according to Satchell. For the Tuesday before the temporary shutdown, FLL had 344 scheduled departure flights, so twice that number for roundtrip total, she said.

Unprecedented flooding

“This rainfall event and its flooding impacts at FLL were unprecedented given the historic volume of rain that fell over our area on April 12,” Satchell said.

FLL had to shutdown once outside of hurricane season for an unusual rainstorm event but its impact and duration was not nearly so severe as this week’s near 26 inches of rain that descended on the Fort Lauderdale area over a period of around six hours.

“Barring shutdowns for approaching hurricanes or tropical storms in the past, the last airport closure for bad weather within the last five years was in December 2019. Two days before Christmas there was a similar incessant rainfall event that lasted a few hours early in the morning that soaked and flooded the airport roadways causing us to close the airport for a few hours,” Satchell said.

On that Dec. 23 messy morning, heavy rains fell started around midnight in South Broward and Northeast Miami-Dade, the Miami Herald reported.

The airport closed around 3:40 a.m. and resumed operations around 7 a.m. after that downpour, more than three years ago. More than 100 flights had been delayed during those hours in the busy holiday season.

FLL’s situation Saturday

KNOW MORE: What’s next for South Florida’s weather? What the forecast says for the weekend and beyond

▪ On Friday, FLL opened at 9 a.m. But not completely. Some parts of the airport were still pools.

▪ Only the south runway was open because the north runway had to remain closed due to standing water, Satchell said. That remained the situation through Saturday morning.

▪ FLL had a targeted time to resume limited arrival and departure aircraft operations on the north runway at noon Saturday, Satchell said. The north runway opened at noon as scheduled.

“Mostly all airport services (concessions, car rentals, garage trams, and shuttles to/from Rental Car Center to terminals) were restored on Friday morning,” Satchell said. “A few concessions were awaiting staff to arrive to open by the early afternoon. We’re glad to have our travelers back and encourage all those traveling this weekend to check with their airlines for updated flight times before coming out and to avoid surrounding roadways near the airport that are still impacted by slow-receding flood waters.”