Holiday travelers see delayed Christmas Eve flights out of St. Louis

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOV) - Christmas Eve is a popular day for last-minute holiday travelers. However, with the winter weather across the Metro earlier this week there continue to be delays.

Nancy Early woke up to a text at midnight telling her that her flight out of St. Louis was delayed two hours, which would mean missing her connecting flight on her way to Hawaii.

“I was checking my phone every moment going is it still on time, is it still on time,” Early said. “And it was up until last night and then everything changed.”

After re-booking a new flight, Early will have to spend Christmas Eve in Dallas before reaching her final destination.

“I don’t know anybody in Dallas,” Early said. “I’ll be in the hotel doing I don’t know what.”

Unfortunately, a story like that was not unique.

Megan Leine had her flight out of St. Louis delayed for hours.

“We thought it would be okay by now because most of the storm hit on Thursday but I think there’s still a lot of backup from missed flights that were during the heart of the storm,” Leine said.

Leine is going to Mexico for a work trip and the delayed flight would have caused her to miss her layover.

“I thought I was gonna have to spend the night in Dallas, which is where my layover was, but then I was able to get rebooked on another flight to Puerto Vallarta,” Leine said. “It was just a huge mess and it was really stressful.”

Some travelers didn’t experience trouble.

However, Elaine Owu said that even though her flight was scheduled to leave on time, she was still stressed leading up to the holiday weekend.

“Up to yesterday or even Friday, the weather was so cold,” Owu said. “I think that’s the first time I have experienced it since living in St. Louis. We were a little bit worried about delays but very thankfully we checked our airplane and it said still on time.”

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