Isabel's proximity means little to local hotels, airport HILTON HEAD ISLAND: Flights to Charlotte continue; tourist numbers mostly unchanged. Hurricane Isabel missed. The monster storm wound up skirting the Lowcountry by hundreds of miles on its course to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It churned up some big waves, cooled things off with nice breezes and, generally, left everything alone in Beaufort County as it passed. It was even business as usual at the Hilton Head Airport, with its daily US Airways flights to Charlotte, N.C., continuing without interruption. US Airways employee Sandra Clark said, "We're fine. We're supposed to be like this all weekend. We've been very blessed." The airline schedules six flights each day from Hilton Head to Charlotte and back. It is the only airline using the airport. Clark said the airline has issued warnings that closings are likely at many North Carolina and Virginia airports today, including Wilmington, Raleigh-Durham, New Bern, Jackson, Fayetteville and Greenville, N.C., and Norfolk, Richmond and Newport News in Virginia. Absent from that list is Charlotte. She said that means anyone flying to Charlotte should check their connecting flights first, to make sure planes are still flying north and east from there. Across the tarmac, in the headquarters of the private Carolina Air Center Inc., Heather Lam sat with her chin on her hands, bored. No private planes had been flown into the airport in recent days as their owners evacuated Isabel's flight path, she said. "It's pretty dead," she said. "Not a thing's going on." So how are local hotels faring? Was occupancy up as North Carolina and Virginia residents fled to points south, away from the storm? "The answer is yes," said Kitty Canady, assistant general manager at the Hampton Inn on Hilton Head. "We have received calls from people who want to head south." She was not sure, however, how many calls were received or where customers were coming from. Simone Buirski at the island's Comfort Inn saw the exact opposite. "There has been no effect really. In fact, we have had at least a couple of cancellations," she said. "We haven't picked up any new reservations at all. I wish (we would)." Gary Sims manages the Holiday Inn-Oceanfront, where on Wednesday he welcomed a large convention that completed filled his hotel's rooms. The short answer, for him, was that Isabel had had no effect whatsoever. He said some people who called on Wednesday did say they were concerned about staying in a hotel close to the ocean, but, "We didn't see any cancellations." Reporter Rob Dewig can be reached at 837-5255, ext. 107, or rdewig@lowcountrynow.com Click here to return to story: http://www.lowcountrynow.com/stories/091803/LOCevac.shtml