Family was stuck for hours after the flight to Salt Lake was diverted to Provo Airport

PROVO, Utah (KUTV) –

A Utah couple had a difficult time returning from a trip to Hawaii when their flight to Salt Lake City was rerouted to Provo Airport due to the snow storm. What eventually turned into a 30-minute drive took hours.

Going from 75 degrees and sunshine to a Utah blizzard can be shock enough, but add this to your flight back from Hawaii:

• Delay in Las Vegas,
• Hold on over Salt Lake City that burned kerosene
• Flight diverted to Provo,
• fill up there and roll to take off,
• blinding snow and no de-icing,
• roll back to the airport terminal,
• a cold, snowy walk around midnight down an outside staircase to the tarmac and then to the airport building.

It is the story of Dedee and Richard Dart of Mapleton, who had been to Maui for about 10 days and recently retired.

“So how would you describe your night?” 2New asked.

“Oh, it’s been a long time,” Dedee replied. “The past 36 hours have been terrible.”

Richard, a private pilot, said he had never had a similar experience.

While flying over Salt Lake, the couple didn’t realize they were on hold until they checked the flight app.

“I looked at the actual route and we went around in circles,” said Richard.

The Salt Lake City International destination became Diversion Provo.

Dedee said they were told the plane needed fuel but Provo Airport was closed. Somehow the refueling happened and the plane rolled to takeoff to complete the flight to Salt Lake.

“Then the blizzard just came,” said Dedee. “We couldn’t even see out the windows.”

Then the darts said there was a problem sending the plane in the opposite direction.

“There won’t be a de-icing truck so we rolled back,” said Dedee.

The couple ended up simply heading to Salt Lake to collect their car from the long-term parking lot.

2News reached out to Southwest Airlines Public Affairs for comment and confirmation of the darts story, but had received no response by early Wednesday night.

The darts said they don’t blame the airline. In fact, they think Southwest did everything right to keep them and other passengers safe.

It was a long night.

“The moral of the story is …” asked 2News.

“You just roll it,” said Dedee.