Larry Meier had planned to fly from Denver to Oakland on Christmas to visit family.

With a carry-on full of gifts for his nieces and nephews, Meier said he got to the airport on Sunday to find out his 1:30 p.m. Southwest flight was delayed due to lack of personnel. Southwest told travelers the flight needed three flight attendants, but only had two, he said. 

Meier’s flight was delayed until 8 p.m., when Southwest announced that it had been canceled.

Tuesday was Meier’s third day spent at DIA trying to cancel the flight Southwest rescheduled for him and, perhaps more importantly, to locate his bags.  

“This is nothing compared to when we came the other two times to do it,” Meier told The Denver Gazette. “We tried to stay in line yesterday, but my daughter stayed here for three hours and barely moved. It was backed up all the way around.”

He was one of thousands whose plans ran into a wall of troubles in the middle of the busiest travel days of the year. Indeed, the holiday travel snarl of 2022 lingered on Tuesday, as thousands of travelers remained stranded, future flights stayed uncertain and many simply gave up and drove to their destinations.

Denver and Southwest airlines are at ground zero for the meltdown, even though freezing weather has cleared.

As of 10 a.m. Tuesday, Flight Aware showed that Southwest Airlines cancelled 2,573 flights across the country, with 328 of those in and out of Denver International Airport. ‘

Those numbers may be on the low side, however, as social media is ripe with videos of long lines and piles of luggage in airports all over the U.S.

Denver International Airport Director of Communications Alex Renteria said the most recent update counted 10,000 unattended and ticketed bags waiting in a space near the luggage carousels, with stranded Southwest passengers spending Monday night sleeping on the floor.

“We worked with Southwest to provide snacks and water and the airport passed out blankets,” Renteria said. “We are getting kicked right into 2023.” 

Meier and his daughter tried to call Southwest several times and couldn’t get through. His daughter was on the phone for six hours on hold before giving up, he said.

Meier’s biggest worry, he said, is getting their luggage back. 

“We have no idea where our bags are, whether they’re in Oakland, California or whether they’re still here,” Meier said.

He said he got a notification Tuesday morning reminding him that his bags had been checked.

“Yeah, I know they’re checked,” Meier said with a sarcastic laugh. “Where the heck are they?”

Meier, a businessman, said he understands that things go wrong in business sometimes but that Southwest’s major issue is that it didn’t seem to have a backup plan. While there should have been backup to call in case someone got sick or couldn’t show up, Meier said it appeared to him that the company didn’t prepare for that.

“It’s not been pleasant,” Meier said. “It was a different Christmas. That’s for sure.”

In a tweet Monday night, the United States Department of Transportation referred to Southwest’s travel mess as “unacceptable.” 

President Joe Biden also tweeted out the administration is “working to ensure airlines are held accountable” and urged travelers to visit transportation.gov if they believe they’re entitled to compensation. 

Southwest’s website blames the pre-Christmas freeze for its problems and warns passengers that, if they called, the airline is “experiencing extremely high call volumes due to Winter Storm Elliott.” Dozens of phone calls to the help line confirmed the warning – nobody picked up the phone to cancel or make a change and customers instead got busy signals or dropped calls. 

“With consecutive days of extreme winter weather across our network behind us, continuing challenges are impacting our customers and employees in a significant way that is unacceptable,” the company said on its website. “And our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning.”

“We’re working with Safety at the forefront to urgently address wide-scale disruption by rebalancing the airline and repositioning crews and our fleet ultimately to best serve all who plan to travel with us,” the company said, adding, “We have made the decision to continue operating a reduced schedule by flying roughly one third of our schedule for the next several days. And we’re working to reach Customers whose travel plans will change to offer specific information and available options, also available at Southwest.com/traveldisruption.”

Many travelers who spent the night at the airport are still scrambling to get to their destinations, wondering where their luggage is.

Both Denver International Airport and the Colorado Springs airport experienced problems.

“We certainly had our impacts,” Greg Phillips, the director of aviation for the Colorado Springs Airport, said. “Southwest has slowed its entire network down to catch up.”