Holiday Hassle Eased : Airport Crowds Appear Somewhat Smaller Than Usual

Their plane was delayed 1 1/2 hours in Denver. Then, when they arrived at John Wayne Airport on Sunday, they had to wait three hours for friends to pick them up. As if that weren’t enough, they spent another 1 1/2 hours cooped up in a car before they finally got back home in Monrovia.

But for Karen and Peter Haugo, their trip to Colorado Springs for the Thanksgiving holidays was well worth the hassle to get there and back. They spent their vacation at a cabin in the mountains with longtime friends who recently retired and moved away from California. “It was just like a winter wonderland,” said Karen Haugo, 51, who returned to Southern California with her husband, Peter, after a week’s vacation. “It made you feel like you had stepped back in time about 50 years.”

There was no argument there from her husband, who lounged beside an airport curb while the couple awaited their ride, using his duffel bag as a headrest. “The deer were just lying down in the back yard,” he said dreamily. “It was such a unique, peaceful experience.”

Like many other Thanksgiving travelers, the Haugos were pleasantly surprised by the small crowds at the airport on what traditionally has been the most heavily traveled day of the year. Late Sunday afternoon, many of the short-term parking garages were virtually empty, as were the lobby and baggage areas.

Last year, according to airport officials, more than 20,000 passengers passed through John Wayne Airport the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

However, because of the strike by American Airlines flight attendants, it is unlikely that the total number of holiday travelers will match the 90,000 who passed through the airport between Tuesday and Sunday of the Thanksgiving holiday last year.

“We’re just not sure what effect the strike had,” said Pat Ware, an airport spokeswoman. “Some people are perhaps choosing to travel by other means or delaying their travel plans until Christmas.” However, no figures will be available until Wednesday.

But many of Sunday’s returning travelers, like the Mason family from Longmont, Colo., said they had been determined not to let the threat of a strike ruin their holiday plans.

They spent a slightly non-traditional Thanksgiving at Disneyland--their fourteenth trip to the theme park, announced Kathy Mason, the matriarch of the family.

“The only thing that happened was we were delayed 1 1/2 hours in Denver because of a storm and the wings had to be de-iced,” said Mason, who was traveling with her husband, Jim, and college-age daughter Kris. “We got to the airport two hours early today though, because we didn’t want to chance missing the plane.”

Others suffered from more serious logistic problems.

“My brother got to the airport, then realized he had lost his ticket,” said Viviane Schultz of Newport Beach. “He ended up having to buy a new ticket back to Seattle.”

Her cousin, Deborah Sosebee, nearly suffered her own mishap.

“We planned to get to the airport early and have a leisurely lunch when she looked at her ticket and realized they had changed the flight from 2-something to 1 p.m.,” Schultz said. “It seems like everyone who was at our house had some kind of a flight problem.”

The Scheps of Tustin had a different kind of flight problem: a tough bout of turbulence on the way back from Newark, N.J. that left them queasy, although it didn’t seem to faze their 7 1/2-month-old daughter Taylor.

“She did a lot better than we did,” joked Taylor’s father, Richard, toting several suitcases and boxes of gifts for the baby.

It was Taylor’s first Thanksgiving and her first trip in an airplane.

“She’s such a good baby, she did really well,” said Debbie Schep, Taylor’s mother. “We had a great trip. We’re just pooped.”

While the airport was comparatively quiet, so were the highways. The California Highway Patrol reported Sunday that there were no major accidents in Orange County and highway traffic was fairly normal.