Snow grounds hundreds of Sea-Tac flights preemptively

The snow continues to cause problems for travelers at Sea-Tac airport.

By Monday morning close to 300 flights have been cancelled and around 150 more were delayed. (For the most up-to-date numbers on cancellations and delays check here.)

Liz Weiner had planned to be on one of those cancelled flights. Instead she got a new flight, with two stops in California, before she gets home to Albuquerque.

“My original flight was at 5 p.m., and I was going to get in at 9 p.m., and my flight today leaves at noon and I’ll probably get in about the same time I would have originally," she said.

She’s OK with that, she said, as long as she’s “safe and headed in the right direction.”

The problem isn’t the runways – those are cleared and fully operational. It’s all the fluttering snowflakes in the air.

Air traffic controllers give pilots more room to fly when visibility is low, Sea-Tac Airport spokesman, Perry Cooper said.

“The aircraft have to be farther apart from each other in the air, and then that reduces the amount of numbers you can bring in at any typical hour,” he said, speaking from the roof of the terminal overlooking a snowy airport tableau.

On a clear, sunny summer day up to 50 aircraft an hour can come in, but with such low visibility Monday morning, he estimated the number of incoming planes was in the “low 20s or high teens.”

Airlines are cancelling hundreds of flights ahead of time to thin the schedule and leave time for de-icing.

Airport crews are working around the clock to keep the runways clear.

“We’ve got over almost a hundred folks that rotate around in three different 12-hour shifts — 12 hours on, 12 hours off is what they’ve been doing for the past week or so,” Cooper said.

Snow has made it rough for some airport workers to get to their jobs.

Baggage handler Desiree Collins was surprised she made it through her snowy parking lot at all this morning, thanks to her fiance’s new truck.

“He goes to a car lot and always wants a car but [I'm] like, ‘Dude, we don’t need a truck’ — but we needed a truck!” she said, laughing.

“He fussed at me for buying an ice scraper the other day. He’s like, “It’s not going to snow anymore.’ And it snowed, and he’s using my ice scraper.”

All this snow has left some weary passengers at Sea-Tac Airport. And it's not just canceled and delayed flights to blame.

Washington State University student Duaa Sakabumi spent a night in the airport when her shuttle bus to Ellensburg was cancelled. Unable to sleep, she wandered the airport for over 14 hours, alternating between sitting, walking, and standing.

She let out a distressed sigh when asked how she was feeling.

“I’m feeling tired, you know, I want to just go and sleep,” Sakabumi said.