Raleigh, NC – Are you going to the airport this weekend? You may want to brace yourself for more delays and cancellations as a painful summer for air travelers continues.
Yesterday, Rae Marie Czuhai was flying high, even before she reached the airport.
The vice president of Raleigh nonprofit The Green Chair Project had just won two tickets to see Walker Hayes rock on stage on the Today Show.
“They said ‘can you go to New York?’ I said, ‘I’ll be in New York tomorrow if I have to walk,'” Czuhai said. “I didn’t know I might have to walk.”
Within hours, she had booked plane tickets, a hotel, and was standing in the terminal, ready to depart.
But then her first flight was cancelled. ,
It was booked, then delayed.
And finally,
“We called my husband and said ‘can you come pick us up at the airport, our flight was cancelled,'” Czuhai said.
Czuhai left the airport around midnight after nine hours of waiting.
It’s a pain thousands of travelers are experiencing this summer.
According to FlightAware, more than a hundred flights were delayed Thursday at RDU and twenty-seven were canceled.
Friday’s picture is even bleaker with nearly 50 cancellations at RDU, part of a wave of 3,000 cancellations across the country.
Airlines cited ongoing staff shortages and the weather as contributing to the problem.
“They said that whenever there’s bad weather in Atlanta, it just ripples across the country for them,” Czuhai said.
Czuhai said she understands the problems facing airlines, but after a summer of problems she is staying grounded, for now.
“If I can’t get there by car, I don’t think I’ll be traveling anytime soon,” Czuhai said.
Adding insult to injury, Czuhai said she is still working to get a refund for that canceled flight.
She told WRAL News she can wait a full month to get her money back.
