Things are up and running again at Southwest Florida International Airport after a disabled plane shut down the airport for hours on Tuesday.
The impacts from the plane are still being felt. RSW is playing catch-up, and this really has a lot of travelers frustrated.
“There was a window, you could actually see the plane. So it was pretty obvious to me what was going on,” said Dan Fey, a passenger at RSW.
United flight 2274 from Newark, New Jersey, landed, and two of its tires blew out on the runway.
The people got off safely, but the plane sat there for hours, meaning no planes could take off or land.
“That’s a little ridiculous to me. I thought that could have been prevented,” said Fey.
Part of the extended delay on Tuesday came because United Airlines said they had to drive a specialized jack from Orlando to RSW to change the blown tires on the plane before moving it from the runway.
A spokesperson for the airport said RSW offered United Airlines assistance with moving the plane, but because of the nature of the incident and aircraft type, United chose to use the special equipment.
Fey said even with the hours-long delay, and the extra night in Southwest Florida, life could always be worse. “I’m not gonna worry about it in light of what’s going on in this area. It’s, you know, not home when you want to be kind of get over it, I guess. Right?”
Flights to and from RSW were on time again on Wednesday, making for happy travelers.
Thousands of people experienced cancellations and delays or were rerouted to other destinations on Tuesday. Mike Cyr, who was flying from Toronto to RSW, was one of those travelers, and right before he landed, “They kept on saying we don’t know if we’re going to be able to land or what, so they said finally came and said, well, we have to go to Orlando.”
Cyr said there were no rental cars left, and he was forced to spend the night in Orlando for his birthday.
“I was supposed to be meeting somebody at the airport. We were going out for dinner and all that, and they had to cancel all that,” said Cyr.
Cyr had canceled birthday plans and had lots of frustration.
Al brown avoided all that stress. He was supposed to fly from RSW to Canada on Tuesday, and when he saw what was happening, he rebooked right away.
“I experienced traveling when they say it’s three or four hours, it’s usually the rest of the day,” said Brown.
He was right. “A lot of people were worse off than us. I just had to go turn the pool here back on and jump in the pool. So it was all good.”
Brown took off on time on Wednesday with no problems.
Travelers told WINK News that flights have been packed as they work to get everyone to their destination, but the good news is that if you look at the flight board, the flights are taking off on time.