NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — Hundreds of people were impacted by delays and cancelations at Norfolk International Airport Monday due to impacts from Debby, which had been a hurricane but has been downgraded to a tropical storm.
Robin Kloeppel, who works for the Coast Guard and is from Suffolk, was good-natured about how the delays and cancelations impacted her.
“What’s going on while putting on lipstick, well, I don’t know,” she said while laughing and putting it away. “You’re going to have to cancel this.”
Kloeppel, who works for the U.S. Coast Guard and had been trying to get to Charleston, will have to wait for now.
“We have to regroup after the storm because it’s going to be like 30 inches of rain on Tuesday, so batten down the hatches on the ship,” she said.
Jeff Miner from Chesapeake refused to wait until his rescheduled 3:01 p.m. flight to Washington, D.C., so he ditched the plane to rent a car for a drive to the nation’s capital.
“We had a flight this morning to Washington D.C.,” he said. “That flight got delayed last night around midnight. It was going to take off at noon, then it got delayed again to this afternoon. … I’m not taking any chances. … My travel partner and I are renting a car and driving.”
Meanwhile, Colleen Sutherland, who is moving to Hawaii with her family of six, was at the airport with what appeared to be everything they owned, packed into 15 pieces of luggage.
“We are already out of our house; we’ve been homeless for a month,” Sutherland said. “We stayed with my mother-in-law and stayed with my mom, and we come here, ready to go to Hawaii. We did everything right — but then this happened.”
Due to delays, they’re now back at mom’s house until Wednesday, when they’ll try again to start their new life.
If you want to track the number of flights delayed or canceled click this link and go to the airport you want to check.
