Airlines are continuing to evacuate stranded tourists from Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.  Continental had three flights depart Cancun and two flights depart Cozumel on Thursday. All flights are arriving at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport.

All Continental passengers have been evacuated from Cozumel. Nearly 500 tourists were evacuated on three Continental flights that left Cancun today.

Two flights are scheduled to leave from Cancun on Friday since there are still about 250 passengers still there. Flights are being limited due to reduced air traffic control and airport capacity. In total, Continental so far has operated 17 evacuation flights from the Yucatan.

Continental began evacuating passengers from nearby Merida on Monday since flights were unable to operate out of Cancun or Cozumel due to the conditions at the airport at the time. Four flights were flown out of Merida on Monday and four flights on Tuesday.

Meanwhile American Airlines
continues to operate special flights to bring passengers back home from Mexico
after they were stranded by Hurricane Wilma.  On Wednesday, American flew more
than 900 passengers back to the United States from airports in Cancun, Cozumel
and Merida.  Because of a lack of electricity and other problems at the
airports, American is not able to operate regularly scheduled service to and
from Cancun and Cozumel at this time.
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