COLORADO SPRINGS — Between the hustle of hundreds of passengers, David Dagg's patience was tested.
"We had about 10 hours in the airport in Vegas because our flight got canceled there. So, it's a lot of waiting around," Dagg said.
He was one of a handful of stranded passengers at the Colorado Springs Airport Tuesday, as snow and heavy winds forced canceled flights and delays in the heart of one of the nation's busiest travel weeks.
Dagg, an Irishman studying abroad at the University of Colorado-Boulder, was supposed to fly into Denver. Instead, his flight was rerouted to Colorado Springs, but finding another way to Denver proved difficult.
"The best we could do was fly here to Colorado Springs, and now at the moment, a lot of the roads are closed," Dagg said. "A lot of the bus routes aren't running, so we're trying to figure out another way to get back up to Boulder."
Flight tracking data showed just eight flights canceled at the Colorado Springs Airport — including five departures and three arrivals, all from Denver International Airport. In addition, around a dozen flights were delayed as the system caught up with itself.
"There has been a handful of delays as we've been playing catch up, if you will, so we have seen a couple of delays. But things have been running pretty smoothly outside of that," said Dana Schield, public communication manager for the airport.
All day Tuesday, the airport's "snow alert" team criss-crossed the airfield plowing snow from taxi areas and brushing the runways clean. They battled strong wind gusts too, creating drifts in spots.
Meanwhile, the Denver International Airport remained a standstill for much of Tuesday morning. As of 5:30 p.m., Colorado's largest airport surpassed 600 delays on top of nearly 500 cancellations.
