East Aurora native Katy Belz says she booked a round trip flight to Sanford, Florida with budget carrier "Allegiant Air" for $125.
The flight was scheduled to leave Sunday at 5:49 PM, but her trip didn't begin until another flight took off at 7 PM Monday night.
“We all got on the plane and waited and waited and then they said pilots hours are up so we can’t go and then the said it was weather related,” Belz told 7 Eyewitness News via FaceTime from Florida.
Belz was ultimately placed on a later flight and given a travel voucher from Allegiant Airlines
A stop at the Allegiant Air departure gate this afternoon showed a handful of travelers experiencing a similar situation.
“We were supposed to originally depart Sunday morning at 11 AM arriving (in Florida) at about 1:30,” Rick Singh told 7 Eyewitness News.
“At about 10:30 on Saturday night I received a text saying that the flight had been cancelled.”
Singh’s Allegiant Flight from Niagara Falls International Airport to Clearwater wasn't the only one to experience disruption.
Doug Hartmeyer with the NFTA confirmed to 7 Eyewitness News there were several Florida bound flights in the past week that were canceled or delayed because of both weather and technical issues.
Hartmeyer says Katy’s Sanford, Florida bound flight was canceled because the crew was close to exceeding the FAA regulated flight hours.
But customers tell me it isn't the cancelations that disturbed them, it was what they considered a lack of communication.
“I would've liked a little more notice because I didn't pick up the notice till 2 a.m. and I was supposed to fly at 11 the same morning,” Singh said.
Every traveler I spoke with today say their situation was eventually resolved.
We’ve reached out to Allegiant Airlines, so far they have not responded.
But in a statement on this past weekend's cancelations published in the Central Penn Business Journal, the carrier said it is "flying a very heavy schedule of flights each day. In addition to this high demand, we had a number of unforeseen events affecting crew and aircraft availability."
