Weather grounds flights

City of Amarillo Aviation Operations Manager Tyler Hurst said things were holding steady Friday at Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport after icy weather kept two scheduled flights from taking off earlier in the day.

"The field conditions for the movement area, our Priority 1 surface areas, have stayed the same," he said. "Temperatures are still dropping a little bit, but holding mostly steady. What we're doing right now is trying to prepare it."

Three flights were disrupted by the ice storm between 9:30 a.m. and 10:45 a.m.

The arrival of Southwest Airlines Flight 4200 was canceled, and two other flights did not take off - American Airlines Flight 5793 and Southwest Flight 6787.

In the afternoon, only two American Eagle flights - 5795 and 5727, both involving Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport - were canceled. But Hurst said he was not sure if weather played a part in either of those decisions.

"I think one tried to leave, but he had a mechanical issue on the aircraft," he said. "I don't know the story with the other one."

Hurst was preparing for another round of sleet overnight.

"Apparently we're expecting another tenth of an inch of precipitation between the hours of 8 p.m. and midnight," Hurst said. "So we're going to be preparing for that. We're trying to better the surfaces with both chemical and mechanical means - snow plows, snow blowers and brooms."

Hurst said his crews are battling ice with a bit of dry snow on top .

"What we try to do, in a perfect world if we could, is we'd lay down chemical first to try to penetrate and break up the ice," he said, "and then use the mechanical means after that, after the chemical activates, and then try to use that to break it up and then clear it away."

He said the strategy has been "somewhat effective."

Airline operations have not been affected much, and braking action has been reported as good.

As far as what's to come, Hurst said the information he got was that the precipitation should be over tonight at midnight.

"But we'll keep going here at the airport. We'll have another shift switch out. And then we'll be trying to do the same thing - monitoring conditions, sending out updates and trying to better the surfaces better than what we have currently," he said.

Hurst said the airport is being flooded with calls about airline information. He recommends passengers continue to call airlines directly for updates.