The ordered the ground stop, which holds flights headed for Denver at their departing airports, as of 4 p.m. because of the storms, officials said in an alert.

Federal officials lifted the ground stop Friday evening and also lifted a ground delay that caused flight delays averaging 30 minutes.

Airlines at DIA reported 828and 10 cancellations as of 7:20 p.m., according to FlightAware, including 287 delays on United Airlines, 236 on Southwest and 181 on SkyWest.

The email came in at around 1:30 p.m. and prompted airport staff and police agencies to evacuate everyone from the premises, airport officials said in a news release.

Law enforcement crews then searched the airport before allowing passengers to return to the terminal at around 4 p.m.

“Law enforcement conducted a thorough search of the airport, including its buildings and facilities, and determined there was no identified risk to the public,” airport spokesperson Kelsey Petersen said.

Airport officials are not releasing additional information about the incident because there is an ongoing investigation, Petersen said.

A United Airlines flight from Denver was diverted to Grand Junction because of the closure, according to .

But many of the pieces that remained stateside — nearly 2,000 of them — have gradually made their way to all 50 states to be put on display as part of solemn memorials, including several installed in Colorado. Some steel made its way across the world to serve as part of overseas memorials, to places as far-flung as New Zealand, Italy and Canada, according to a new book about the fate of the steel that came crashing down.

On Friday’s anniversary, the broken and shattered strands of steel stand as reminders of the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, the day that 19 Islamic radicals hijacked four planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Virginia and a field in Pennsylvania — the last one occurring after passengers and crew tried to rush the cockpit.

Nearly 3,000 people died as a result of the terrorists’ actions that day, though few bodies were recovered because of the extraordinarily violent impacts and the ferocious fires the commandeered planes caused.

“The agony of the steel — the twisting — is a metaphor for the people who died that day,” Max Holleran told The Denver Post this month. “Bringing this steel to all parts of the country gives communities closure — a kind of burial.”

He and his brother Sam, both of whom spent a significant chunk of their childhoods in Boulder, wrote the which tells the story of what happened to the tons of steel that once supported the nearly 10 million square feet of floor space the towers contained.

Around a dozen pieces of gnarled metal ended up in memorials in Colorado, including at fire stations in and Denver and at sites in Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, Broomfield and Pueblo.

With few burials possible following the attacks, “alternative death rites” were needed to memorialize the tragedy of that day, the Holleran brothers write in their book, with “proxy funerals and mourning rituals … performed not on bodies but on an architectural component: structural steel.”

That structural steel holds a special place in the heart of 84-year-old Don Addy. Addy served as president of the National Homeland Defense Foundation, a now-defunct Defense Department program that supported military personnel and their families.

He is responsible for bringing a half-dozen pieces of World Trade Center steel to Colorado Springs, most of which went to the military bases that give the city so much of its identity. Standing under a large, mangled I-beam memorial at Fort Carson’s Gate 1 this week, Addy thought back to the countless 9/11 ceremonies he had attended and spoken at.

“If you look at that, you can’t possibly misunderstand the power of the destruction and damage caused by these buildings’ collapse,” he said, pointing to the contorted 17-foot-long beam. “That’s the way I brought it in.”

As years have passed, the ceremonies honoring those who died on 9/11 — and in the wars that were launched in response to the attacks — have evolved, Addy said, as those alive on the day have become fewer. In fact, his search for steel pieces in New York in 2010 was prompted by a colonel at Fort Carson.

The colonel told him a memorial could help his young soldiers, who were just 10 or so years old in 2001, better understand the day’s significance.

“Why are we in these wars? Why are we doing this?” Addy said, pointing up to the twisted steel monument. “Because of that.”

Now, 16 years after the memorials were unveiled, that generational disconnection is even more pronounced, with now either too young to remember 9/11 or not yet born when it happened. That has created fertile ground for new, and often pernicious, narratives to form around that day, Addy said.

That includes comments from Colorado Democratic House candidate Melat Kiros, who is heavily favored to represent Denver in Congress starting in January. The democratic socialist, who was a young child on 9/11, was sharply criticized in recent months after saying a comment that U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, whom Kiros had challenged in the Democratic primary, said her. Kiros beat DeGette by double digits in the June 30 primary.

Addy feels comments like Kiros’ are a rewriting of history that shifts blame from the terrorists who carried out the attacks to the country that was attacked.

“I’m very worried about the rhetoric that has popped up around that day,” Addy said. “It’s propaganda.”

Highest ‘steel-to-citizen’ ratio

Colorado Springs is cited in “Scattered Steel” as the city with “one of the country’s highest steel-to-citizen ratios” when it comes to World Trade Center remnants.

Memorials can be found at Fort Carson, Peterson Space Force Base, Schriever Space Force Base, the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, the U.S. Air Force Academy and the campus of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

“In a place where so many people were lost in the War on Terror, it becomes a way of talking about their sacrifice and of rationalizing these wars that were not going very well,” Holleran said of the country’s extended conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq following 9/11.

Most of the memorials in Colorado Springs are on base, behind military checkpoints, but the ones at Fort Carson and on the CU campus are accessible to the public. The memorial at Fort Carson sits just feet from a tribute to soldiers from the base killed during the wars in the Middle East over the last quarter-century.

“In the years since 9/11, steel has become the de facto language of memorialization, and the placement of hundreds of salvaged steel beams in local memorials has spread the grief of the attacks to every U.S. state,” the Hollerans write in their book. “These scattered memorials are relics of a new kind, diffusing the national grieving process.”

The steel relic mounted on three beams at Fort Carson’s Gate 1 was brought from a hangar at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2010 on a flatbed truck driven by a father-and-son team and paid for by the then-Coors Brewing Company, Addy said.

The steel had been stored at the airport, “and, for several years, (was) largely forgotten about,” the Hollerans write.

“People want to touch it,” Addy said, looking up at the beam this week. “This is where people died.”

There is no better place in the city than the CU campus to provide the tactile connection that so many seem to want when they come across a piece of 9/11 steel, Addy said. A small team of students in the school’s College of Engineering and Applied Science spent the better part of a year designing and building a large memorial for Cheyenne Mountain.

They made a smaller version, complete with a globe partially shrouding a piece of World Trade Center steel, for the CU campus. It was dedicated on Sept. 12, 2011 — one day after the 10th anniversary.

The steel inside the globe is rusted and looks rough — and that’s on purpose, said Peter Gorder, the engineering department’s chair. He oversaw the students’ work on the memorials.

“We wanted it to look like it looked when it was dropped off on our front step,” he said. “And the globe concept reflected that this was a world-changing event.”

Gorder, 63, was in his second year as a professor at CU when 9/11 happened. His son was watching SpongeBob SquarePants on the kitchen TV that Tuesday morning when his wife told him to switch the channel. He saw a plane crash into the second tower.

“It was a very meaningful event in my life,” he said of 9/11.

What Gorder remembers most about the process behind the fashioning of the memorials was the need people had to touch the steel while it sat in the department’s machine shop.

“We had people coming from all over campus to put their hands on that beam,” he said. “People just wanted to be in its presence.”

In “Scattered Steel,” Gorder said that 15 years after the memorial was put in place at the top of an outdoor staircase between two engineering buildings, hundreds of people a day walk by it — but they pay it little attention.

“Which is, I don’t know, maybe not unexpected, but kind of sad,” he told the authors.

That was the case for Jacob Biles, a 19-year-old student at the university now. He said he passed the memorial half a dozen times a week but had no idea what it represented — that is, until his parents visited him on campus and told him what it was.

“It should be something people think about,” he said this week. “It’s still affecting us to this day.”

A few minutes later, senior Clara Aziz walked past the steel-in-globe sculpture. Until that moment, the 22-year-old had no idea what it was.

“I just thought it was a metal sculpture of the globe,” she said. “I guess it doesn’t affect me as much as someone who was alive at the time (9/11 happened).”

‘Never forget’

United Airlines Captain Miles Morgan, who is managing director of flight training for the airline, said he oversees young pilots who weren’t alive when 9/11 happened.

That’s why unveiling a memorial made of 9/11 steel — Colorado’s latest — in a ceremony Friday at United’s flight training center in Denver is important to him. It comprises two steel beams, each measuring 9 feet and 11 inches, that represent the World Trade Center towers that once dominated the skyline of Lower Manhattan, he said.

Eighteen United employees died in the attacks, he said.

For Morgan, it’s personal. Over his 31 years as a United pilot, he said he flew both of the United jets that were deliberately crashed that day 25 years ago, one into a World Trade Center skyscraper and the other into the field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

“It was a horrifying thing to watch,” he said. “That’s why the monument we’re dedicating Friday is so special to us.”

Max Holleran, now 41, was a student at Boulder High School on 9/11. He watched the day unfold on a TV in the school’s library.

He hopes that at some point people can come to terms with the solemnity of the day, and honor those who died that day, while at the same time leaving space for discussions about U.S. foreign policy and religious extremism.

At Colorado’s most extensive and comprehensive 9/11 memorial in Broomfield, all was quiet at midday on a workday this week, as the collection of bronze placards mounted to stone bases told the story of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

Tucked between two pieces of flagstone, below a sculpture of a fireman resting his head on a beam — the bottom of which was buttressed by a piece of steel from ground zero — was a handwritten note written in pink magic marker. Below it sat a solitary red rose.

“Keep America free from all enemies foreign and domestic,” the note said.

And then, in all capital letters on the back: “NEVER FORGET.”

Denver emergency management officials published a notice about the flyover earlier this week to let residents know the event may be “highly visible from parts of Denver, noticeable by sounds, more noticeable than a typical aircraft event, (and) brief, but surprising if you aren’t aware it’s planned.”

“There is no emergency. This is a planned memorial event,” city officials said in the alert. “The flyover is intended to honor and remember the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001.”

The flyover was set to start at 8:15 a.m., when a United Boeing 777 would leave Denver International Airport and be joined by a 120th Fighter Squadron from Buckley Space Force Base before flying over United flight training center in Denver’s Central Park neighborhood.

United officials said the company had planned the flyover, “a meaningful gesture to honor the memory of those lost within the pilot community, but will suspend those plans due to concerns in the community and instead carry on with the other events of the day.”

The company did not elaborate on those concerns and a United spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Colorado National Guard officials did not respond to a request for comment about the 120th Fighter Squadron’s participation. Military officials , including F-16s, to respond to the attacks the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

City leaders decided to notify Denverites about the flyover after United Airlines informed Denver officials about the plan, said Jon Ewing, spokesperson for Mayor Mike Johnston’s office.

“We understood it as a means of honoring the victims of 9/11, first responders, pilots and the aviation community, but we also understood there could be significant concerns or surprise from the public,” Ewing said.

The community response to the planned flyover was mixed, with some who thought it was a good idea to honor victims while others said it would be concerning, Ewing said. Ultimately, the decision to cancel was United’s, he added.

“Whether you think this was a good idea or a bad idea, I don’t think you can deny that OEM got the word out,” he said.

United’s memorial service commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks is not open to the public, airline officials said.

United, American Airlines and other airport employees will pause for a moment of silence at DIA at 9:03 a.m., which is when hit the south tower of the World Trade Center in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. American Airlines Flight 11 had crashed into the north tower 17 minutes earlier, and Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m.

The airline on Friday is unveiling a monument at the Denver flight training center made from steel recovered from the World Trade Center to honor crew from Flight 175 and , which terrorists had planned to use to attack Washington, D.C., until passengers and crew overpowered them and crashed the plane in a field in Pennsylvania instead.

The airline announced Tuesday that the year-round service will be operated on a . The new route will complement existing service from Newark/New York, Washington Dulles, Chicago and San Francisco.

The announcement comes as United continues to expand and invest in Denver, which the airline calls its fastest-growing hub. Patrick Quayle, the airline’s senior vice president of global network planning and alliances, told reporters on a call Monday that Paris was the only new international destination from Denver under consideration at this time.

“If you look at really the arc of how we’ve been investing in Denver, it¶¶Ňőap been methodical,” Quayle said. “We’re adding capacity at a nice measured rate where the market can absorb it.”

United has invested nearly $1 billion at Denver International Airport since 2021. The airline provides service to more than 200 total destinations from Denver, including more than 20 international destinations.

Last week, United completed its first phase of an expansion at its pilot training facility in Denver’s Central Park neighborhood. The airline is preparing for a second phase at a new campus on 113 acres near DIA.

Beyond Denver, United announced 10 new international destinations and three new routes across Europe and Asia, while introducing its newest international aircraft: the “Born to Explore” Airbus A321XLR.

Beginning as early as March 2027, United will offer new nonstop flights to Okinawa, Japan, from San Francisco International Airport; Toulouse, France, from Washington Dulles International Airport; and eight destinations from Newark Liberty International Airport: Luxembourg City, Luxembourg; Marseille, France; Ibiza and Valencia, Spain; Terceira, Portugal; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Olbia, on the Italian island of Sardinia; and Catania, on the Italian island of Sicily.

United will also add new flights from Los Angeles to Osaka, Japan, and from Washington, D.C., to Milan, Italy. The airline said it plans to resume flights from San Francisco to Tel Aviv, Israel.

United’s Airbus A321XLR will support service to destinations including Ibiza, Luxembourg, Marseille, Toulouse and Valencia.

The A321XLR is scheduled to begin flying select domestic routes in September and transition to international service Dec. 1, starting with flights from Dulles International Airport to Amsterdam and Dublin. Tickets for the first international flights will go on sale Thursday, Aug. 27.

United also plans to bring back the international destinations it added in summer 2026 for summer 2027, including flights from Newark/New York to Split, Croatia; Bari, Italy; Glasgow, Scotland; and Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

The airline said it will serve more destinations in Japan, Spain, Portugal, Italy and France than any other U.S. carrier, according to Tuesday’s announcement.

“We aim to have a destination on our route map for every traveler, at every stage of their lives,” Quayle said.

“Whether it¶¶Ňőap a business trip, a dream honeymoon, a bucket-list adventure, or a trip home to see family, we’re making the world feel smaller and connecting cultures at a scale no other airline in the world can match.”

The airline on Thursday celebrated the of a major expansion at its Denver Flight Training Center, adding 40 new since 2022, including full-motion and fixed flight training simulators.

The event drew a packed room inside one of the site’s buildings at 7500 E. 35th Ave., with towering flight simulators on either side of the crowd.

United and CAE executives, members of the media and U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper attended as United CEO Scott Kirby and CAE President and CEO Matthew Bromberg spoke about the expansion.

“This expansion reflects the strength of a partnership built over more than four decades,” Bromberg said.

“We’re proud to support United with the training technology, expertise and reliability needed to prepare pilots at scale and we look forward to supporting its training needs for years to come.”

The expansion brings the center to eight buildings and nearly 700,000 square feet of training space, roughly the size of 12 football fields. It now has 86 CAE training devices, including 52 full-motion flight simulators and 34 fixed training devices.

The center can train up to 860 pilots a day. United has nearly 18,000 pilots, and all of them complete required simulator training at the Denver facility. Newly hired pilots also train there.

Pilots complete simulator training when they first qualify to fly for United and return every nine months for additional training and evaluations.

The 22-acre facility can conduct more than 32,000 training sessions a year and operates 24 hours a day, 362 days a year.

“United pilots are the best aviators in the world, and the pace at which our team has completed this project is an example of making investments that support our high standard of excellence,” Kirby said. Kirby said the simulators give pilots the most realistic experience possible and prepares them to handle unlikely situations if they occur.

“We can put them through the most stress that you could possibly imagine — this is the safest thing that you can do for training because you can put pilots in situations that they’re unlikely to ever see,” he said.

But United isn’t done expanding its training center.

The airline expects to break ground in 2027 on a second training facility on two parcels of undeveloped land near Denver International Airport. The new facility is expected to open around 2030 and will operate along with the current center.

United bought the land in 2023 for $33 million. In July, the Denver City Council approved the airline’s request to rezone the properties, and United has started developing formal site plans for the new facility.

Kirby said even though the current training center is the “biggest facility in the world,” the new one will include more flight simulators.

United’s Flight Training Center was was built between 1966 and 1968 as part of the former Stapleton International Airport complex. It has served as United’s main pilot training facility since then. Since 2016, the airline has invested $370 million in the flight training center overall.

The expansion milestone also comes as United continues to grow its Denver operation.

The airline has invested nearly $1 billion at DIA since 2021, including new gates, United Club locations and a new check-in lobby. United hired more than 1,400 people in Denver last year and plans to hire more than 1,300 in 2026.

Kirby also hinted to reporters that the airline will announce “the most exciting” new international route the entire United network has had next week.

United operates more flights and carries more passengers in Colorado than any other airline, according to a Thursday news release. This summer, it is averaging 570 daily departures from DIA and serving more than 200 destinations, including more than 20 international locations.

The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ground stop at 4 p.m. and said flights headed to DIA are delayed by an average of two hours.

Airlines canceled dozens and delayed hundreds of flights Saturday at DIA, including 91 flight cancellations and 708 flight delays as of 4:30 p.m., according to the flight tracking website .

SkyWest reported 38 canceled flights and 121 delays, followed by 34 canceled flights and 265 delays on United Airlines and 14 cancellations and 211 delays on Southwest. Frontier Airlines also canceled five flights and delayed 49.

Storms are expected to continue until the evening, according to the National Weather Service.

Penelope Wong, co-owner of Yuan Wonton in Denver, is one of 11 chefs from four continents who United is featuring in conjunction with Chef’s Table, a brand that grew out of the Netflix series of the same name. Wong’s journey from food truck to first class began in 2019 and was capped in June when she won the James Beard award for best chef in the mountain region.

The multi-course menu consists of shokupan bread with smoked trout, lemongrass, Chinese celery and trout roe; kale salad with fresh cherries, golden beets, grana Padano cheese and honey ginger vinaigrette; and five-spice duck wontons with duck brodo, Swiss chard and chili oil.

It is only available in United’s “Polaris” seats on nonstop flights from Denver to Rome, London, Frankfurt, Munich and Tokyo, according to information provided by United Airlines. The meal has to be ordered in advance.

“I am truly excited about this partnership with United Airlines and Chef’s Table,” Wong said in a statement. “Sharing my story through a series of tastes and bites allows a glimpse into my internal struggle of growing up Asian American, but just how delicious that struggle can be when embraced.”

, she added: “To me, Denver is home. As a native, I’ve loved seeing the extreme changes in and throughout the Denver metro city, from the outskirts and all the way up to the foothills and mountains. From the overall character of the people to the variety that is now ever present in what I believe defines the Denver dining culture. Denver has become a sort of melting pot for diversity, and the dining has never been better.

“Being a part of this project included my own personal trip down memory lane, finding and sorting through old family photos, learning things I never knew about my own parents and their journey as immigrants halfway across the world,” she added. “Sharing these memories with Chef’s Table to tell my story is probably one of the most special moments I’ve been able to experience in my culinary journey. And meeting, befriending, and working alongside the incredible talent in this pool of Chefs is something I will always treasure.”

Wong opened Yuan Wonton as a pop-up and food truck 7 years ago. In 2023, she, along with her husband Rob Jenks and sous chef Ngoc Nguyen, opened a restaurant at 2878 Fairfax St. in Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood.

These menus will be served now through October, “with a new lineup of dishes from set to launch in November and rotate seasonally into 2027,” the airline said.

United Airlines announced Friday that it will launch a new nonstop service between Denver International Airport and Providenciales International Airport this winter, making it the only major carrier to offer a direct connection between Denver and the Caribbean destination.

Flights are scheduled to operate once weekly, on Saturdays, between Dec. 19 and April 24, 2027.

The flight to Turks and Caicos will have a travel time of about five hours, according to a Friday announcement by DIA.

The country, north of the Dominican Republic and southeast of the Bahamas, is an archipelago of over 40 islands, with Providenciales serving as the third-largest and most populated island.

Known for its turquoise beaches and the world’s third-largest barrier reef, the islands offer opportunities to explore marine life, coral reefs and shipwrecks.

Turks and Caicos will be United’s fifth destination in the Caribbean from DIA, joining existing service to Nassau, Bahamas (NAS); Montego Bay (MBJ), Jamaica; Punta Cana, Dominican Republic (PUJ); and San Juan, Puerto Rico (SJU).

“United’s network offering from Denver is unmatched, and the addition of Turks and Caicos is yet another destination that only United brings to Coloradans,” United Vice President Jonna McGrath said.

“United’s commitment to delivering an exceptional travel experience in Denver is underscored by each new route we add, as well as the more than $1 billion in investments we have made here since 2021.”

The announcement follows the Turks and Caicos Islands’ in Denver, where Premier, Hon. Charles Washington Misick was welcomed by Gov. Jared Polis, who proclaimed May 20, 2026, as Turks and Caicos Islands Friendship Day in Colorado in recognition of the growing ties between the destination and the state.

Misick said in a Friday announcement that the new route will open up new opportunities for the Turks and Caicos Islands.

“This new direct service between Denver and Providenciales is tremendously exciting for the Turks and Caicos Islands,” he said.

PLS brings the number of nonstop destinations in the Caribbean served from DIA to six, and the number of DIA nonstop international destinations to 35. With the addition of Providenciales, United now offers flights to more than 200 nonstop destinations from Denver, including 24 international cities across 13 countries.

DIA’s global air service network, encompassing nonstop destinations served by all DIA carriers, now totals 237 destinations worldwide, including 35 international markets across 19 countries and 202 domestic destinations in 46 U.S. states and Puerto Rico.

The company reported 384 delayed flights at the airport around 4 p.m. Tuesday, including 194 delayed departures and 190 delayed arrivals.

Four other flights were canceled, three of which were departures.

Colorado weather: Severe thunderstorms with possible large hail, heavy winds expected in I-25 corridor, Eastern Plains

Nearly 200 Southwest Airlines flights and more than 100 United Airlines flights were delayed, according to FlightAware. Ashley Bain, a spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines, said in a statement that weather near Denver was impacting flights.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport for thunderstorms at 3:30 p.m., according to the agency. Flights at John F. Kennedy International Airport were also on a 15-minute delay for storms, according to the FAA. There were no ground stops for weather or any other reason at Denver International.