DENVER — Travelers heading to and through Denver International Airport Tuesday morning endured an array of delays and cancellations after dense fog forced the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a ground stop and later, delay.
"We were about to board," said Sarah Faulk, who was traveling to Denver from Austin Tuesday. "Half of us had already boarded, and they pulled us off the plane for a delay here in Denver. I guess, (they) said that there was real heavy fog and that they were backing out all the flight traffic."
Faulk told Denver7 the delay lasted about an hour-and-a-half, with the pilot walking travelers through why the delay had been issued.
"He was talking about the sun and the deep fog and the reflection of the light," she said. "He was explaining how planes can still see, pilots can see, and you can land, but you have to go much slower, and there has to be a lot more distance between the planes."
"At some point, air traffic here in Denver stops everyone that's about to come in and keeps them on the ground until they can kind of, I guess, relieve the traffic jam," Faulk added. "It's like you're going through a funnel, you know, like when there's a car accident or something, and you have to go slow."
"They were just like, okay, you're safer on the ground in Austin than coming here," Faulk said.
Despite the early morning delay, Faulk was in high spirits, happy safety was taken into account and she had landed in her destination. However, others weren't as lucky.
"I was flying from Baltimore to Denver, Denver to Seattle. Flight got delayed from 10:15p.m. till 1 a.m. and then from 1 a.m. we got a text message saying that it got canceled," said Fez Qureshi. "We have to rebook it. We stood in line from 1 a.m. till now, which is like 5:30 a.m."
In that same line was Veronica Cornin, who didn't shy away from her frustration.
"I am very stressed out this morning," she said. "I've been awake for almost 24 hours now. There's a lot of people here, and there's a lot of flights getting delayed," Cornin added. "It has not been enjoyable at all. Definitely would not recommend flying during this time."
There were also those like Jim Zehner, who took a 24-hour Memorial Day weekend golf trip to Albuquerque. His flight was delayed, then canceled, but Southwest rebooked him, getting him back to Denver even before his initial flight was supposed to.
"We were at the pool having fun, and then they eventually, our flight got canceled because of the weather, and then they just put us on an earlier flight and brought us home," he said.
While Zehner got to Denver sooner than expected, his luggage did not.
"We knew our bags were not going to make it because our flight got canceled and we'd already checked in," he said. "They just said they'll put them on the next available flight, which was this morning. Then we got a text saying, come get them, and we came up and got them."
Zehner said after living in Colorado for decades, he wasn't surprised or upset over the weather delays.
"There's always weather here, so it was not a big deal to us. I'd rather be on the ground and bounce around in the air, for sure," he said. "This is it's just traveling. It's part of traveling."
Denver7 reached out to Denver International Airport for answers on how and if it was helping those with major delays and cancellations stuck at the airport. A spokesperson provided the following statement, "DEN has support staff and volunteers throughout the entire airport to help passengers during delays/cancellations, by providing general information, status updates and/or supplies during high-level emergency situations."
