Feb. 17—Playing it safe, Jennifer Fultz and her group booked flights on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to return to Boise, Idaho.
Fultz and seven of her employees — they were in San Antonio for a company retreat last weekend — figured if one flight got canceled, they would have an insurance policy for seats on another plane out of San Antonio International Airport.
The winter storm forced the cancellation of their original flight on Monday. So they got a rental car to drive El Paso and leave the snow belt behind. If El Paso didn't work out, they figured Phoenix, Arizona, would.
They aborted the plan after reaching Kerrville, 57 miles northwest of San Antonio. No gas stations were open in the Hill Country town.
"We decided not to go past civilization and risk running out of gas," said Fultz, who co-owns a home health care agency.
Back in San Antonio, they checked into Drury Inn & Suites San Antonio Riverwalk. They ate a frozen pizza Monday night before the hotel ran out of food. It was candy bars and other snacks on Tuesday. There was no running water in the hotel, but Fultz and her co-workers managed to flush the toilet after filling up ice buckets with water from the swimming pool.
On Wednesday, Fultz and thousands of other stranded travelers finally received good news — kind of. The airport's main runway opened and the first flights since the storm hit the region were scheduled to depart late Wednesday afternoon.
But every airline operating out of San Antonio International had already canceled their Wednesday flights, except for Southwest Airlines. Even then, only five of Southwest's 16 daily flights were scheduled to take off.
Thursday also may be dicey.
About 47 percent of the scheduled departures on Thursday, a total of 29 flights, were canceled, according to FlightAware, which tracks arrivals and departures.
Sunday's storm shut down all departures and arrivals at San Antonio International, with no planes taking off on Monday or Tuesday.
The airport owns no snow removal equipment, leaving airport officials unable to remove snow that blanketed runways and the rest of the airfield on Sunday night and Monday morning. Sheets of ice under the snow on the airfield were also a problem.
A combination of less frigid weather, which melted the snow, and de-icing equipment enabled the airport's main commercial runway to open at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, said Jesus Saenz Jr., San Antonio's aviation director.
"Our team worked hard for the last 72 hours," he said. "It was a team effort to reopen the runway."
Dozens of passengers spent Wednesday night at the airport. For some, it was the second or third night in a row. They had already checked out of their hotels in anticipation of a plane trip back home, only to find their flight had been canceled.
Airline employees gave many travelers mock tickets so they could go through security checkpoints and eat at the small number of open restaurants in Terminal A.
Since the snowfall, Fultz and her employees had bonded over card games and devising plans to make it out of San Antonio. It was unclear if they would make it home Wednesday.
Their 3:45 p.m. flight on Southwest to Denver, where they would board a second flight to Boise, had already been bumped to 5:10 p.m. A second delay moved the flight to 7 p.m.
"I am not sure we are going to get out of here tonight," she said.
Some passengers on Wednesday gave up hope of flying out of San Antonio, instead opting for car rentals.
But only two of the seven rental counters were open Wednesday at the airport's car rental center.
SIXT Rent A Car manager Cody Barrows said one renter was driving to New Jersey and another was traveling to Denver. Barrows said he was cutting rates on the rentals.
"We are trying to work with people as best we can because we realize people need to get home," he said.
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