Airlines expect a busy week with the Labor Day holiday capping off a hectic summer for air travel, but it may be less crowded at Denver International Airport than Labor Day week last year.
DIA was expecting 954,319 people to travel between Tuesday and Monday, which includes Labor Day weekend.
That estimate is down from the 979,172 travelers expected during the same week last year. Passenger-traffic growth at DIA slowed earlier this year, and while Southwest Airlines and Denver-based Frontier Airlines have added flights, United Airlines – the largest carrier at DIA – reduced domestic flight capacity this year.
The busiest days of the week at DIA will be Friday, with 157,405 travelers expected to use DIA, and Thursday, with 149,800.
The Air Transport Association, a national airline group, forecasts 15.7 million passengers will travel on U.S. airlines from today through Sept. 5 – up 2.6 percent from the same period last year.
Bad weather – the cause of most delays – and air-traffic congestion have made flying a hassle with delays and cancellations for many travelers this summer.
United had only 49.5 percent of flights departing on time during the Aug. 1-21 period – meaning a roughly 50-50 chance of a flight leaving on time. That’s according to a United measure that counts as on-time departures only those that leave exactly on time, which is more stringent than the federal definition that counts a flight on time if it is less than 15 minutes late.
United attributed the below-average performance to severe weather that led to delays and cancellations throughout its system. United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said fliers often aren’t aware that even if skies are clear in the city they’re departing from, the airport the plane is coming from or the city the flight is going to may have bad weather that could cause a delay.
Frontier planes were struck by lightning three times Monday, airline spokesman Joe Hodas said.
“Not that it’s unsafe, but the aircraft still has to be evaluated,” he said.
And bad weather en route from a flight’s origin to its destination can also create delays.
“If we had a different (air-traffic-control) system in place, we could do something differently in terms of how we fly around storms,” Hodas said.
“We end up going way out of our way to avoid something when there’s probably a more efficient path to take, but the ATC can’t outline that for us because of the antiquity of the system,” Hodas said.
The Air Transport Association advised passengers to check in online if possible and check their flight status before leaving for the airport. It also recommended that travelers keep an extra supply of any necessary medicine, snacks and diapers for babies in the event of an extended delay.
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at 303-954-1488 or kyamanouchi@denverpost.com.
Packing ’em in | Recent weekly passenger traffic estimates for holiday weeks at Denver International Airport:
979,172
Labor Day 2006
966,976
Thanksgiving 2006
1,025,256
Christmas 2006
1,056,807
Memorial Day 2007
1,037,795
Independence Day 2007
