1KChinito

Denver (DEN) and Colorado Springs (COS)

Cover dates: 14, 15 & 16 July 2011

Tickets purchased on or before 14 July 2011

mahasamatman

Here's the full policy: http://www.united.com/page/article/1,,53760,00.html

tods27

I'm confused. Yes, there are thunderstorms moving through right now, but I am surprised that they have already posted a travel waiver. It's not like the storms will be continuous for the next 24 hrs. It's Denver - expect t-storms in the late afternoon/evening and adjust accordingly.

COSPILOT

I assumed it was a response to yesterdays hail storm. My understanding is that many planes suffered damage during the storm.

laangelsfan

So lucky to get out on-time when we did yesterday. I was on the 5:45 pm flight to LAX. Took off with two huge thunderstorms brewing to the direct west, lightning strikes visible on the ground. Pilots received permission to deviate as necessary to sandwich between the two weather cells (Ch 9 was on ^). All of the passengers were looking out of the windows with deer-in-the-headlight looks. I must give major kudos to the pilots who did a terrific job with little to no chop as we went through it ^. Flight was smooth and we got in early.

Not surprised to hear about the storm damage, it looked like it was about to get fierce.

Downdog

I am connecting at Denver tomorrow. Hope my flight will take off OK

StarlightSusan

All of a sudden a LAX-DEN flight I'm watching for tomorrow went from having a lot of space to being all 0's. It also looks like every other LAX-DEN flight except the last one went to all 0's.

COSPILOT

Caught the tail end of the local news, I expected some dents, even severe ones at that, but not complete holes and/or tears in portions of the wings. It was too close to tell if it was a portion of the flaps, or possibly an aileron. Nevertheless, it must have been pretty bad at DIA yesterday. COS also had hail, but not that big. COS did get 2" of rain between 10 pm and 11 pm last night.

mdspadeccom

Another big tstorm came through DEN yesterday afternoon about 4:30 pm. We sat in the plane at the gate for an hour waiting for it to pass. The rain was heavy and the plane was buffeted by wind. The ramp was shutdown to get the workers inside. Quite a few flight cancelation yesterday at DEN due to all the aircraft out of service from hail damage the day before (Wednesday). A ferrying pilot told me that his plane was damaged to the point that it was taken out of service while it sat at the gate loaded with pasengers Wednesday and that his car in the parking lot was also damaged. (The week before he lost the roof on his house in the area due to the continuing storms.)

United757

I flew on an Xjet flight out of DEN on the night of the 13th. There was a crew delay for almost 2 hours, and by then the storm had rolled around to the airport. As we were boarding it started to pour rain which quickly turned to hail. They got everyone off the ramp, stopped boarding new pax, and closed the door on the ERJ (with only 10 people on board) for about 45 minutes while lightening danced around the airport. The ramp crew were checking out the aircraft with flashlights before take off.

I took a short video of the hailstorm from onboard, but I'll need to upload it to YouTube.

1KChinito

Waiver now includes 16 July 2011

1KChinito

Now 17 July 2011 is also included.

FriendlySkies

A friend of mine who works for F9 indicated that a number of their A318/319/320s were damaged by the hail.

ColoBill1

After a parched June, with only one day of rain here north of COS all month (and a high water bill as well), this past two weeks or so has been a welcomed relief, with a nice rain falling in the late afternoon/early night every day until yesterday, for a solid week. Even this time of year (our so called "monsoon" period), that frequent a rain is a bit unusual. But what was really unusual is that not a single one of these recent storms was accompanied by any hail at all, which is truly more than unusual. Hail is quite prevalent here at the foot of the Rockies, and both outside plantings and vehicles suffer every year due to it.

Can't remember the last time such a damaging thunderstorm passed over DEN, or during the past 35 years over COS. The last storm at DEN that affected me was the surprise snow storm this past May, which caused me to finally get home at 0440 in the morning.

PHLGovFlyer

I flew through DEN on Friday and a UA GA mentioned that they had 40 aircraft out of service due to hail! I didn't ask what the mix of mainline and UX was.