Holiday headaches in Rochester

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — A holiday travel headache. For the fourth straight day, thousands of flights all across the nation were either delayed or canceled. However, most people flying into the Rochester area experienced very little, to almost no traveling issues throughout the day.

News10NBC spent some time at the ROC Airport to hear from travelers.

According to the Flight Aware website, at one point Monday there were more than 1,400 delayed flights and almost 400 cancellations. Most people we talked to were quite satisfied flying back from their holiday destinations.

"Flight was great. It’s the one going back that I’m a little worried about," said Melbourne, Florida resident Virginia Hamilton.

Minutes after arriving at the airport in Rochester, Hamilton couldn’t be happier with her flight. In fact, her plane landed 10-minutes early on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

"I was shocked because I watch the news, and saw all the horror stories, and believe me I was checking my cell phone every 2 seconds to make sure there were no delays, or cancellations, or any of that," said Hamilton.

Monday’s departures and arrivals in Rochester all showed primarily on-time schedules, but since Friday hundreds of thousands of holiday airline passengers dealt with full cancellations or delays. Most of these issues centered on either a shortage of staff at many airlines or stormy weather.

Dawn Hoff-Cowdery lives in Canandaigua and flew to and from North Carolina over the weekend.

"In Charlotte, we had a 2-hour delay. I think it may have been weather-related as well as just the busyness with all the planes," said Hoff-Cowdery.

Her return trip back to Rochester was much smoother.

"I flew from Raleigh to LaGuardia, and we had about a half-hour delay there due to the busy flights happening all along the east coast," said Hoff-Cowdery."

One family happy to be back from their travels to Beirut, Lebanon is forced to deal with one well-known problem when flying—lost luggage.

Rochester resident Robert Leni said, "It was frustrating having all our luggage be on the plane allegedly, but then getting off, and only realizing only two of the three were there."

Leni says the missing bag is full of clothes, and souvenirs from their trip.

"We’re hoping it gets in from Paris sometime in the next week. They told us it could be anywhere from the next 7 to 10 days. So we’re hoping it sooner rather than later," said Leni.

During the 4-day holiday weekend, Delta Airlines has the most canceled flights, and the company just announced Thursday that starting July 1 into early August it will trim some flights to improve operational reliability.