Storm Forces United Flight to Divert, Ruins Thanksgiving For Passengers

Passengers flying from Indianapolis to Denver on an early-morning flight on Thursday were hoping to spend a full Thanksgiving Day with friends and family.

But the snowstorm in the Rocky Mountains played havoc with this trip.

After originally expecting to land at 7 a.m. in Denver on Thanksgiving morning, passengers on a United Airlines flight were diverted to Colorado Springs, then had two attempts at landing there aborted, but finally landing at tiny Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport, in Gunnison, Colo., about 200 miles southwest of Denver.

Oh, and then came the mechanical issues that forced United to bring in another aircraft.

All told, the flight didn’t leave Gunnison until almost 5 p.m. and didn’t get to Denver for another hour after that. And by the time the passengers left Denver International and got to their final destinations, well, it was a time when most people were nibbling on leftovers.

United Airlines passengers diverted to Gunnison because of weather, airline says.

The flight leaving Indianapolis was supposed to arrive in Denver at about 7 a.m.

“We started descending into Colorado Springs, going down and down and the engines roared and we pulled back up,” passenger Connie Doebele told the Denver Post. “The landing was aborted. And then it was aborted a second time. By this time, people were getting a little scared because nobody was saying anything. We didn’t know what was going on.”

The plane then diverted to Gunnison.

“We looked at each other like ‘we’re in a Boeing 737, and we’re landing in a place no one has ever heard of?’” Doebele said. “Here we sit. The airport is really, really small.”

A United spokesperson told the Post and WTHR in Indianapolis that the airline apologized to passengers and offered them compensation.

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