After a week making memories with their four children on slopes of the Steamboat Resort, Rebecca and Erick Soine packed their bags before heading to the Yampa Valley Regional Airport to begin the long trip home.
However, what was expected to be a less than three-hour flight turned into a three-day ordeal full of anything but happy memories.
“It’s been an absolute mess,” Rebecca Soine said of Delta Flight 2370 from Yampa Valley Regional Airport to the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta.
“We started our journey on Saturday morning, and we had a small weather delay, but after the weather delay, every single other plane took off except ours,” she continued.
Kevin Booth, director of the Yampa Valley Regional Airport, said the flight had been diverted on Saturday, March 5, to Salt Lake City because of weather earlier in the day.
The plane arrived in Hayden later that day and was expected to leave for Atlanta when the flight crew “timed out” — meaning the crew had reached a point where they were no longer allowed to fly without taking a mandatory 10-hour break.
The crew and passengers of the Delta flight — and a Jet Blue flight that was also delayed — were taken to Craig on a former school bus owned by the Yampa Valley Regional Airport after the airport closed late Saturday night.
The crews and passengers of those planes returned on Sunday, March 6, expecting to board early morning flights for home. The Jet Blue flight was able to depart, but a mechanical issue discovered just before takeoff…