DENVER, Colo. — What should have been just another busy travel Sunday turned into a logistical nightmare as winter storms swept through the country, snarling transportation across the nation.
Denver International Airport experienced its busiest travel day of the Thanksgiving period Sunday, with 96,000 passengers expected to pass through security checkpoints.
Travelers dealt with extended wait times both in the terminal and on the road – many greeted with bumper-to-bumper traffic along Pena Boulevard as they headed to the airport.
"I sat in traffic for about 25 to 30 minutes," said Jeylen Fountain, who was flying home to Mississippi.
The holiday travel weekend became a lot busier with the winter weather sweeping the nation, with most of those delays happening at airports across the Midwest and northeast.
Sam Blatt, flying back to Denver from Newark, experienced a slight delay but found it all pretty manageable.
"Originally, the delay was about an hour, but then it only ended up being about like 20 minutes," Blatt said. "We've been waiting longer for the bags than the delay.”
The winter weather created a snowball effect of delays that impacted over a thousand flights across the country on Sunday, including those arriving at DIA.
DIA had 22 cancelled flights and more than 800 delays by the end of the day Sunday.
Nina Rajwar's flight back from San Jose, California was briefly delayed on the runway before departure.
“It was like 10 minutes. So, I got in maybe 20 minutes later than I would have liked. But overall, it was really smooth,” said Rajwar.
Many Coloradans, like Harris Rab, were determined not to let travel delays ruin the tail end of the holiday weekend.
"We saw there was a little bit of some storms or whatever, [so] we tried to change our flight to an earlier one, and that was not an option. So we just stuck with it and we made it," Rab, who flew back from Dallas, told Denver7.
Travel experts say you should check your flight status often and give yourself extra time to get to the airport and make your way through the terminal.
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