With the airports in New Orleans and Gulfport, Miss. closed to commercial traffic, airlines that serve the popular destinations face a loss of business while dealing with potential fuel shortages.

The latest challenge for airlines comes as they were already worried about outstripping supplies. Some airlines had begun carefully measuring on-board weight and using ground power for parked jets at airport gates even before Hurricane Katrina shut down the nation’s most important energy sector.

“We’re very concerned about it,” said Whitney Eichinger, spokesman for Southwest, which spent $1 billion on jet fuel last year. “It’s a very large part of our business.”

Jet fuel prices soared to new heights last week. In the Gulf Coast region, the average price for a gallon of jet fuel Wednesday was $2.28, a 34-cent jump from that day a week ago.

At New York Harbor, a gallon of jet fuel was $2.33, a 38-cent rise from that day a week ago. New York Harbor was is one of the major ports of petroleum.

Katrina underscored the added strain on refineries, pipelines and the airlines’ own fuel procurement efforts as the industry recovers from its worst-ever downturn – June passenger traffic was up 4 percent from 2001 levels, according to industry data – and energy demand rises throughout the economy.

“It’s really starting to surface as an issue,” said James Holland, vice president of logistics at Kinder Morgan Energy Partners L.P., a Houston-based pipeline operator.

Daily jet fuel production nationwide has been cut 13 percent because of damage from the hurricane to Gulf Coast refineries, according to Jack Evans of the Air Transport Association.

“What it means is there is less fuel essentially,” Mr. Evans said. “Carriers are having to take measures to conserve fuel at airports where they are low and tanker in fuel when serving some destinations on the East Coast.”

Southwest – which offers 167 daily flights from Baltimore-Washington International Airport – canceled all flights to and from New Orleans through Sept. 12. The airport had seven flights a day from BWI Airport to New Orleans, spokesman Linda Rutherford said.

“The resumption of service at that time will be contingent upon our ability to conduct our scheduled operations, the conditions of our airport facilities, and the surrounding community,” the airline said in a statement.

Ms. Rutherford said operations were being routed to Jackson, Miss., Birmingham, Ala., and Houston.

Even before Katrina hit, Southwest began requiring all planes parked at jetways before takeoff generate power through the airport facility.

The fuel-saving measure allows Southwest planes to use electricity from the airport terminal as passengers board, instead of aircraft engines.

The procedure should save the Dallas-based airlines an estimated $1.7 per year in fuel costs, Ms. Eichinger said.

Meanwhile, AirTran Airways, which offers 40 daily flights out of BWI, recently announced plans to install “blended winglets,” 8-foot extensions on planes that will improve efficiency in take-off. It shut down its 18 daily flights to and from the two Gulf airports at midweek.

Delta Airlines, which operates more than 20 daily flights out of BWI, is installing lighter seats for its entire fleet, which will lighten the weight of planes and require less fuel to operate them.

Delta does not have contractual arrangements to reduce air-fuel costs below market level but it is making efforts to better match the amount of fuel each aircraft needs, said company spokesman Benet Wilson.

The airline is cutting costs with layoffs and 10 percent employee pay cuts to help make up for the loss, she said.

“Unfortunately there’s not much we can do,” she said. “We’re trying to be more aware. The planes have got to go and they only run on jet fuel. We’re doing as much as we can in other areas to offset the increase in fuel prices.”

Despite efforts to mitigate energy costs, record high fuel prices are adding billions of dollars in costs for airline companies and hindering their profitability in 2006, according to the Air Transport Association, a trade association for U.S. airlines.

How many gates does lambert airport have?

Lambert airport has two main terminals with five concourses. Terminal 1 has 4 concourses with 68 gates and terminal 2 has one concourse with 18 gates. So, Lambert airport has a total of 86 gates.