For the sixth day in a row, travelers with flights in or out of Denver International Airport, especially those flying with United Airlines, faced the possibility of being stranded because of problems with the carrier’s crew-scheduling system that were exacerbated by seasonal afternoon thunderstorms.
According to the there were 930 delays and 140 cancellations as of 6 p.m.United Airlines led the charge, accounting for the bulk of flight problems: 81 cancellations and 316 delays among arriving and departing flights.
The delays Friday pushed United Airlines’ total at DIA over six days, starting Sunday, to more than 700 cancellations and nearly 1,500 delays, FlightAware data shows.
SkyWest, the airline that operates United Express, had the second most cancellations Friday. As of 6 p.m., SkyWest canceled 53 flights, bringing United’s Friday total to 134 cancellations — or about 13% of its schedule. The only other airline to cancel flights, Mesa, canceled six.
Travelers continued to struggle with being stranded at DIA and other airports nationwide.
On Friday morning, Doug Holub was at United’s baggage counter in DIA’s terminal trying to figure out how to get home to Cleveland. Near the counter, rows of luggage awaiting return to passengers were arrayed along the wall.
“Itap lousy,” Holub said of an experience that wasn’t likely to end Friday.
He got off a ship in Vancouver on Thursday with a group of 12 family members and friends, and all have been diverted to various cities amid United’s cancellations. Holub was originally supposed to go back to Pittsburgh, where he’d flown out, via Toronto. That got switched to Chicago, and then to a flight taking him through Denver.
En route to Denver on a delayed flight Thursday afternoon, they were diverted to Grand Junction for several hours due to the Front Range’s severe storms. They made it to DIA at midnight, with no connecting flight anymore, and spent the night waiting. Now they’re booked to Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday night, and Holub says he should be able to arrange a pickup.
“Weather is what it is,” he said. “But when there’s an issue, somebody’s got to help them,” he said of passengers he’s seen standing in hours-long lines at United’s customer service desks.
Over in DIA’s Concourse B midmorning, dozens of people were lined up to speak to customer service agents. It was a queue full of exhaustion and exasperation, and United staffers wheeled carts with juice, water and snacks to hand out.
Tyler Susko, 38, of Santa Barbara, California, had his first flight canceled Wednesday to visit his parents in Fort Myers, Florida. He said he spent more than four hours on two calls waiting to speak to customer service, and the call got dropped the second time. So he went to the airport, got booked on a flight out Friday morning, and thought he was finally set to fly to Florida, via Denver.
“And then they canceled this (connecting) fight — while we were pushing off from Santa Barbara,” Susko said. “Had they let me know 15 minutes earlier, I just wouldn’t have boarded the flight.”
He was waiting to sort it all out in hopes of reaching Florida for a two-week trip, but so far, he’s seen online options leaving in another day or two, including one routed through Los Angeles.
He also worried about his wife and children, who were in Pennsylvania on a separate trip to visit family and were planning to meet him in Fort Myers. “I’m considering just transferring over to Pennsylvania,” he said.
In front of him in line was Cheryl Snook, who said she didn’t have a horror story — at least not yet.
But she, too, was stranded. After a business trip in Billings, Montana, this week, she was heading home to Reno, Nevada. She learned her connecting flight had been canceled when she landed in Denver on Friday morning.
She was in line to learn her options.
“I just want to be home,” Snook said. “I miss my kids and my dog.”
United’s problems this week have been exacerbated by a faltering crew-scheduling system, the Associated Press reported this week, citing accounts from the airline’s unions. Flight attendants said United lost track of crews in some cases, and in others employees spent hours on hold waiting for assignments.
That bears echoes of an outdated and overwhelmed scheduling system’s role in Southwest Airlines’ December meltdown around Christmas, which was felt even more starkly in Denver.
In February, United aired a TV ad during the Super Bowl in the Denver market that took a subtle dig at Southwest’s earlier problems by playing up United’s reliability through DIA during the holidays.
On Monday, United Airlines staffers set up 500 cots for stranded passengers, relying on DIA officials to provide blankets for passengers stuck overnight. Officials said they set up cots again on Wednesday, but .
Earlier this week, United officials pointed to severe weather as a main contributor to cancellations and delays, citing flight crews, pilots and other staffers hung up in other parts of the country. They also pointed to shortages of air-traffic controllers, but federal officials disputed that factors as a major contributor.
“We’re beginning to see improvement across our operation,” United spokesman Russell Carlton wrote Thursday in an emailed response to Denver Post queries.
However, the airline canceled an equal amount and delayed more flights Thursday than the two days previous, according to FlightAware data.
