Jesse Paul / The Colorado Sun
On Friday, 227,497 passengers were expected to pass through the airport, one of three Fridays in July forecast as candidates to be the busiest-ever day at DIA.
We won’t actually know how many people passed through the airport on those dates for a few more months. But there was only a difference of a few hundred passengers projected between the three Fridays.
The Colorado Sun spent nine hours at Denver International Airport on Friday, talking to people checking in, to folks visiting the Mile High City for the first time and to the workers behind the scenes making it all possible, to learn about the effect of the rush and what’s in store for the future of one of the state’s most powerful economic engines.
While conventional wisdom holds that the busiest air travel days are those closest to big holiday, like Christmas or Thanksgiving, in truth it is in summer that the traveler counts really climb. Summer vacationers combine with the normal number of business travelers criss-crossing the nation to create a new level of busy.
It’s a crush that passengers can see, but that also has an impact out of their view, in the control towers high above the concourses and the underground highway where bags are rushed to gates.
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