Holiday travel disrupted at Spokane International Airport amid nationwide delays, cancellations | News

SPOKANE, Wash. – Travelers at the Spokane International Airport are experiencing what so many across the country have been dealing with for several days–flight delays and cancellations.

“I have never experienced this, and I’ve never seen airports with these many people,” said Jessica Jackson from Temecula, Calif.

Thousands of flight cancellations nationwide continued on Tuesday, the majority once again coming from Southwest Airlines, though Delta and Alaska showed delays with flights into and out of Spokane.

The flight tracking website FlightAware said Southwest canceled more than 2600 flights on Tuesday, or about 65% of their regularly scheduled routes.

Departure information from the Spokane Airport’s website showed only two Southwest flights took off on Tuesday–one to Denver and one to Sacramento.

The cancellations have disrupted people’s holiday plans, like Peggy Leupp, who was supposed to be in Florida on Saturday.

“I’ve been kind of sad because I missed Christmas with our daughter, and she says we’re going to do it tomorrow now, so we’re hoping,” Leupp said.

Jackson said their connecting flight home from Sacramento was canceled, and the soonest they could re-book was five days out.

“We can’t stay, I was worried,” Jackson said. “All I did was try and get a rental car. If I had to stay here another five days, I’d rather just drive six and a half hours.”

The Spokane Airport Hertz, Dollar and Thrifty rental car location has also seen a spike in demand now that more people are unexpectedly stuck in Spokane.

“We’ve seen a couple customers heading over to Salt Lake City, we’ve had a couple customers stranded in California that are trying to make their way back and things like that with our vehicles,” said Mark Tellvik, the location’s manager. “So, just trying to be as flexible as we can and as accommodating as we can with the customers.”

So has the Springhill Suites across the street from the airport.

“We’re selling out every night,” Vanessa Polson, the hotel’s general manager, said. “Today alone we’ve had about 25 canceled Southwest reservations come through.”

Still, travelers like Dylan Hughes and his family from Spokane—who are planning on driving eight hours to their destination in California after landing in Sacramento—are left hoping their patchwork plans stay standing.

“We took off a lot of work for this, we’re already strapped for cash from Christmas, so if this happens, we don’t have work for a week and we’re just stuck here for no reason,” Hughes said.

FlightAware shows Southwest has canceled almost 2500 flights scheduled for Wednesday. Travelers with trips scheduled this week are encouraged to monitor their flight status and remain in contact with their airline.