Southwest Airlines flew stranded travelers out of Houston for free

Southwest airlines.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Harvey has put most of Houston's non-boat transportation options at a standstill, Houston Hobby Airport included. Hundreds of travelers were stranded at the airport over the weekend after the storm grounded all flights, but about 500 passengers made it out Sunday night when Southwest Airlines conducted five emergency rescue flights to Dallas.

Southwest is the primary airline operating out of Houston Hobby, the city's smaller of two commercial airports. The airline loaded customers into five of its stranded Boeing 737s and flew out Sunday evening, making sure to depart before sunset as the airport had no functional runway lights to guide takeoff.

Southwest still has 10 planes on the ground at Houston Hobby, but a tweeted announcement Sunday evening suggested more humanitarian flights would not be possible Monday and Tuesday. It is unclear how many travelers remain stranded at the airport, or when normal commercial flights will resume.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.