Affected & Unaffected, Southeast Colorado Responds to Cancelled Flights During the Shutdown

By Anne Boswell

Major airports in the United States are experiencing flight cancellations and delays related to the current government shutdown. However, as of Friday, November 7th, it's a mixed bag on affects to Southeast Colorado.

Bent County native and Pueblo resident Jace Ratzlaff told us he has flown three times in the last 37 days of the government shutdown.

"While there seems to be the perfect storm to place blame on what I would consider “normal” flight issues and delays (TSA/Unions/Shutdown), TSA (Federal employees) have gotten me where I need to be safely and without problems. I suspect propaganda as the shutdown lingers and we enter into high volume holiday travel. I’m going to continue to fly, and I anticipate the fine service that TSA always provides," Ratzlaff added.

As of Friday morning, Flightaware.com reports 1,198 flight cancellations, and 13,727 delays. This is expected to change daily, even hourly as reported by more than seven news agencies. Larger airports are more likely to be affected. You can see it visually here on what Flight Aware has named the Misery Map.

Jenni Mortimeyer owns Mortimeyer & Associates - Dream Vacations, a travel agency in Lamar and isn't taking any chances with her own trip.

"So we are actually supposed to be going to a travel advisor conference this week and we're supposed to be flying out tomorrow night. We started monitoring the chatter a week or two ago when you know the government wasn't opening up yet and kind of watching how it was starting to affect airports; definitely mildly, but occasionally some of the airports were having to shut down for a couple hours because they were getting overwhelmed, because they didn't have enough staff. So we were kind of monitoring it and we actually preemptively put a rental car on hold at DIA just in case. So last night, of course, the FAA announced that they were going to be putting a 10% reduction on 40 different airports and since we're flying out of DIA and we're supposed to be flying into Miami, both of those airports are being affected by the reduction."

Mortimeyer explained that the cancellations and delays in large airports will affect business and she has already been preparing for that.

"We aren't the only ones experiencing travel impacts as obviously there's a whole bunch of travel advisors on their way to the same conference as us, and there is also, of course, the general public. I have two clients actually that are flying in here in the next week or two and one of them has already requested to cancel their plans because they're just not comfortable in light of the situation and then the other one is hoping that things can clear up before they fly out next week, but I've been monitoring it for them and just kind of trying to keep them updated what I'm hearing in the travel world so that they're at least well informed."

There were no delays reported on the Amtrak website when we checked on the morning of Friday, November 7th. While it might not work for everyone, rail travel is an option for Southeast Colorado being that there are depots in La Junta and a pick up station in Lamar.

"We don't have a full-fledged airport right here in the area and so a number of the clients that we've been talking to you have been looking into the prospect of hopping on the Amtrak and doing their trip from there basically, so that's definitely something to consider," Mortimeyer said.

Due to the current government shutdown, there's an order from the Federal Aviation Administration to cut four percent of the flights in the country at the 40 busiest airports.

If the Senate doesn't vote to re-open the government, that reduction could increase to ten percent of the flights by next Friday, November 14th.

(note: Jenni Mortimeyer's company's website is https://jlmortimeyer.dreamvacations.com/home-page)

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