DENVER — Taking off from Denver International Airport Sunday was a nightmare for Danielle Tadlock.
“It’s no fun for me, this is like no fun,” said Tadlock.
She made it to Mexico to celebrate a birthday and her anniversary.
“I still don't have a bag,” Tadlock said.
But she's spending more time replacing the necessities she packed in her suitcase that did not make it on her flight.
“Just trying to find stuff, or getting on the phone and calling people and being put on hold, or filling out more online complaint forms,” Tadlock said.
This was an airport issue, not an airline issue.
Sarah Marquez, DIA's senior vice president of airport operations, said Tadlock's bag was one of thousands piled up at DIA Sunday.
“Approximately around 11,000 bags were missed between all of the top five partners that we have, so it's a large number,” Marquez said. “We had a belt completely tear, and full replacement had to happen of that belt.”
Marquez said replacing a broken belt is usually a quick, easy fix, but not this time.
“That was a prolonged event, more so than we ever see within our system, honestly,” Marquez said. “Some cascading things happened after that. I would say the system was up and down the whole day, which creates a very unreliable experience for our partners, right.”
Now DIA is working on preventing this from happening again.
“Any singular event in its core would have been somewhat preventable," Marquez said. "But as you know, just like you drive your car, or just like the pipes in a house might need work, going back to our preventative maintenance program and really focusing on bringing in technology and analytics into a more future-proofing asset prediction for when certain types of maintenance needs to happen, etc. We have a large scale program out right now and we are looking to modernize our baggage handling system. And in that scope of work is a lot of that replacement of 30-year-old infrastructure that doesn’t have the intelligence or the capability to tell us ‘this vibration is happening,’ ‘this heat is here,’ all those things that will better prepare us for this happening, rather than it happens and we can react.”
DIA apologized for the problems the airport faced Sunday.
“Customers traveling through DEN, we are so thankful for your business and partnership and investments in the community here in Denver," Marquez said. "I think it’s important for everyone to know we are a young airport, but also aging pretty rapidly. Our terminal building was built for 50 million, serving 50 million annual passengers. We currently serve 78 [million], and the infrastructure that’s in place right now is 30-years-old. We are working very diligently to get through that, and we are working very hard to make sure we have the best and brightest systems out there. I do want to express my sincerest apologies for problems we had on Sunday, and we are doing everything we can to make that better not only short term, but long term.”
Four days later, Danielle's could see her bag was still at the San Jose del Cabo, Mexico airport Wednesday morning,
only because of her quick thinking during Sunday’s chaos.
“I would have no idea where my bag was if I didn't have an AirTag,” Tadlock said.
She was able to pick it up later that day.
Since she can't get her time back, Danielle is hoping to get her money back.
“Just under $600 and you’re talking about, you know, also the taxi cab rides to get from point A to point B,” Tadlock said. “Definitely I want to be reimbursed for any dollar I spent.”
Tadlock received a $75 voucher from Southwest.
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