{"id":42913,"date":"2022-01-04T00:53:20","date_gmt":"2022-01-04T07:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cancellations-delays-mount-at-durango-la-plata-county-airport\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:10:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:10:22","slug":"cancellations-delays-mount-at-durango-la-plata-county-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cancellations-delays-mount-at-durango-la-plata-county-airport\/","title":{"rendered":"Cancellations, delays mount at Durango-La Plata County Airport"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Frontier
Frontier Airlines\u2019 decision to stop flying out of Durango-La Plata County Airport in October hit the airport hard in November, when passenger traffic dropped 17 percent. Frontier says it will resume service to the local airport in May.<\/span>SHAUN STANLEY\/Durango Herald file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Travelers in Southwest Colorado have begun to feel the effects of flight disruptions across the U.S.<\/p>\n

The Durango-La Plata County Airport has been hit by a wave of cancellations and delays since Saturday, making holiday return travel difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere admittedly are many frustrated travelers out there,\u201d said Tony Vicari, director of aviation at DRO. \u201cWe\u2019ve been communicating with those folks to the best extent we can, but the impacts that we\u2019ve seen have been reflective of a nationwide challenge in the airline industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the first three days of January, DRO has experienced 11 flight cancellations and numerous delays, Vicari said. On Monday alone, three flights to Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, were canceled and one flight to Denver was canceled.<\/p>\n

The airport does not track delays, but cancellations have been unusually high.<\/p>\n

DRO has about 12 daily departures this time of year, Vicari said, which means nearly a third of all flights out of the airport have been canceled in the first three days of January.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the course of an entire year, our (cancellation) figure is somewhere between 1.5% and 3%,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is between 10 and 20 times the type of cancellation rate that we would typically see over an extended period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

While weather was blamed for cancellations around the Christmas holiday, Vicari and airlines have attributed the current disruptions to the rapid spread of the omicron variant.<\/p>\n

\u201cOmicron has had a significant impact on flight crew availability for all airlines nationwide,\u201d he said. \u201cThe predominance of our flights that canceled in January have been canceled citing flight crew availability from the airlines. That\u2019s due to positive omicron cases in airline flight crews throughout the country and the need for those folks to quarantine or isolate.\u201d<\/p>\n

JetBlue said it had received \u201crecord-breaking sick calls\u201d in a staff memo last week, according to The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Staffing shortages and intense holiday demand have significantly lowered the capacity of airlines across the country.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/em> reported that airlines have canceled more than 8,000 flights in the U.S. since Jan. 1, accounting for more than 1 in 10 flights.<\/p>\n

FlightAware, a flight tracking company, showed more than 3,000 cancellations and almost 6,000 delayed flights around the U.S. on Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Denver International Airport has been among the worst airports in the country. DIA had more than 100 canceled departures and 120 arrivals on Monday, according to FlightAware.<\/p>\n

Vicari said the last number he had seen was over 15,000 canceled flights in the last two weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe understand that we have a lot of frustrated travelers and just want to make sure that they understand that this is a national issue and not just a Durango issue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

DRO flights to and from Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth and Phoenix have all been affected. Frontier has been the only carrier at the airport without a cancellation, Vicari said.<\/p>\n

It may seem as though the problems disproportionately affect smaller airports in rural communities because of the severe disruptions at DRO, but the entire industry has been overwhelmed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really been an impact on a national level. We\u2019re seeing a similar level of disruption across the board, regional up through hub airports,\u201d Vicari said.<\/p>\n

For those who plan to travel, it is crucial that they monitor their airlines for delays or cancellations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have any critical travel where time is of the essence, you need to be monitoring those,\u201d Vicari said.<\/p>\n

Travelers should also consider contacting their airline to make alternate arrangements or consider moving their flights to an earlier date or time, he said.<\/p>\n

Even if travelers are proactive, they still face travel interruptions.<\/p>\n

With limited flight crews and fewer flights, more people are jockeying for each seat, leading to a nationwide seat shortage, Vicari said.<\/p>\n

Travelers will likely confront the same delays, cancellations and frustrations in the coming weeks as omicron spreads with no immediate end in sight.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, we\u2019re projecting that there\u2019s going to be some staffing turbulence in the airlines for at least the short-term future,\u201d Vicari said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think most folks are anticipating a bumpy road at least this week,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

ahannon@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

impacts sweeping across country have hit DRO in the new year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[916,950,915,28,1753,475,1469],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-air-transport","tag-durango","tag-durango-la-plata-county-airport","tag-headlines","tag-holiday-or-vacation","tag-la-plata-county-colorado","tag-travel-and-commuting"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85500,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42913\/revisions\/85500"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42913"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}