These photos are your holiday travel nightmare come to life
Christmas is just a week away, so we're now officially near the height of holiday travel season, which is full of hiccups and snarls. Travel veterans won't flinch, but new photos out of Denver International Airport on Sunday might make anyone's heart skip a beat, especially if they're worried about making an upcoming flight.
Winter weather resulted in hundreds of canceled flights on Frontier Airlines and a nightmare mess of hundreds of suitcases, forcing passengers to search through the backlog of luggage to find their bags, like a needle in a Samsonite haystack.
On Friday, a winter storm dumped around eight inches on the Denver metro area, almost twice what had been forecast. This weather resulted in the cancellation of over 400 flights out of Denver, and Frontier was most notably impacted.
Airport spokesman Heath Montgomery told the Denver Post, “Both the airport and the airlines were not expecting so much snow so it threw a curveball in operations."
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Many travelers had their flights canceled after boarding or, after landing in Denver, found their baggage hadn't made it with them and had to come back on Saturday or Sunday to search for their bags amongst hundreds of suitcases that looked the same.
One flight from Atlanta was reportedly stuck on the tarmac for five hours after landing before passengers were finally allowed to exit the plane.
The nightmare extended to something as simple as talking to customer service, too. A reporter for Denver's Fox affiliate shared video of what was allegedly a 10-hour-long wait to speak with Frontier reps at the airport.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Mashable has reached out to Frontier Airline for more information on the recent snarl.
Frontier wasn't the only airline dealing with delays, though. United Airlines also had a severe delay at one of its customer service counters at the airport.
Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
