The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
24 hours to get passengers to their destination in Denver
By Cayla Vidmar
A United Express flight that took off from Albuquerque, N.M. for Denver made an emergency landing at the Gunnison airport last Sunday around 4 p.m. when a mechanical warning went off in the plane’s cockpit.
The plane landed safely, but reports from passengers indicate that oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling and passengers were instructed to get prepared for a possible hard landing. “It was the scariest 20 minutes of my life,” said one passenger.
A relief airplane was sent that evening to retrieve passengers from Gunnison, but according to Gunnison airport manager Rick Lamport, the plane arrived over Gunnison around 11 p.m. Even so, the pilot “did two approaches and couldn’t make it in with the weather and visibility, so he went back to Denver.”
Passengers of the flight had to overnight in Gunnison, and didn’t leave for Denver until around 3 p.m. on Monday, nearly 24 hours after the emergency landing.
