Crazy, long lines at Oakland airport as some Southwest passengers miss their flights

OAKLAND, Calif. - Oakland International Airport had long lines to check bags at Southwest on Thursday morning. The day is expected to be one of the busiest post-Christmas travel days, as people return home after visiting with family or head out on a New Year's trip. 

Multiple passengers told KTVU they missed their flights after standing in line for more than two hours before even entering the building.

"It's been crazy," said Morteky Dellum of Portland. "I come down here every year for Christmas. It's never been this bad. And everybody in line is like,' Yeah, it's never been this bad.'" 

"We got here and we were like, 'This is the checked bag line?' So we've been in line for over an hour and I don't know what's going to happen. We have 20 to 30 more minutes at least and our flight left 5 minutes ago," said Dorothy Richards, trying to get back home to Buffalo after spending Christmas with family. 

She said there aren't many other flight options for her today. 

"Unless we can make one of those flights, there’s probably not a chance that we’ll get home today," said Richards. 

Other passengers tell KTVU they could miss weddings or big family events because of this backup in Oakland. 

In a statement to KTVU Thursday morning, Southwest said, "We are not experiencing anything out of the ordinary other than we are seeing a lot of people traveling. We are fully staffed and working to take care of our customers."

Nationally, the holiday travel season has gone pretty well so far, especially compared to last year when there was the debacle where Southwest Airlines canceled nearly 17,000 flights and stranded two million passengers. There have only been around 1,000 cancelations from Dec. 20 to 26 this year, which is less than 1% of flights. 

There have been a few thousand delays over the last week though. And on Wednesday, there were quite a few delays in the Bay Area, more than 500 at SFO, 100 at Oakland and 60 in San Jose. 

AAA predicted that between last Saturday and New Year's Day, there would be 115 million people in the United States travel at least 50 miles by air or car. That’s up 2% from last year.