LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – After a day that saw dozens of cancellations and hundreds of delays into and out of Harry Reid International Airport, some of the passengers who did arrive in Las Vegas were a bit annoyed.
“I got a notice that (my flight) was going to be delayed by two hours,” lamented Colin Swift, who flew in Monday evening from Kansas City for a financial services conference. “I have some coworkers here already who told me that apparently there were some issues going on at the Las Vegas airport, which was kind of weird to hear.”
Swift was surprised to learn his delay was not due to weather in his hometown. The opposite was true for Las Vegas native Austin Rudin, who was delayed by more than an hour from Houston.
“The flight was a little rough, too,” Rudin told FOX5. “We had a little turbulence. They kept telling us to make sure we had our seatbelts on, which we’re not really used to unless we’re coming from somewhere that’s stormy.”
The weather forecast caught him off-guard.
“It was super interesting coming into Vegas and dealing with those issues and then looking at the weather and seeing it’s raining here,” Rudin said. “We were like, ‘Oh no! We’re going into the rain in the desert.’ It’s not what we expected.”
Mark Brice, who flew in Monday evening from Buffalo, New York, found some joy in the delay.
“I actually got to see our kids come off the bus,” he said. “(My kids) said, ‘Hey, I thought you guys were supposed to be gone!’”
Brice was happy to find a little light in his otherwise awful last 24 hours. He had just witnessed his Buffalo Bills lose to Swift’s Kansas City Chiefs in the freezing cold in person. He says that loss made his flight full of Buffalonians a bit of an awkward experience.
“Unfortunately, it was kind of a somber atmosphere,” he recalled. “So, yeah, a delay didn’t help matters.”
Brice and Swift both lost their nights.
“This is a day of work that I’m missing, so it’s a little annoying,” Swift said. “Kind of a waste of a day, honestly. I thought I was going to be here in time to go grab some dinner and maybe see a show or something, and here I am now trying to scramble to find food and hit the hay.”
But after Sunday’s gridiron result, Brice is taking any win he can get.
“Buffalo is 26 and snowy. So we’re going to 56. It’s really still all gravy for us,” he said cheerily. “You’ve got to make lemonade out of lemons, right?”
The FAA reported an average ground delay of nearly three hours at Harry Reid International Airport Monday.
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