On August 15th, the Denver International Airport’s parking kiosk system went down for roughly an hour, trapping nearly 1,000 passengers trying to leave the premises and head home after their exhausting flights. Passengers weren’t the only losers, as the airport lost $68,000 in parking revenue due to the outage.

Parking problems

Just before 10 PM local time last Sunday, the parking kiosks at the exits of all the airport’s public parking lots lost internet connectivity, which prevented credit cards from being accepted. Travelers were stuck in the parking lots for roughly an hour and complained that they were “being held hostage.”

Denver International Airport Bob Pool Shutterstock-1

Photo: Bob Pool | Shutterstock

Denver International Airport’s (DEN) Senior Vice President of Parking, Mark Nagel, told CBS News:

“Sunday night was a bad customer experience and we don’t want that to happen.”

Simple Flying has contacted the airport for an updated statement.

A passenger, Seth Kaplan of Westminister, who had flown returned from his weekend trip to New York City with his wife, shared his terrible experience saying:

“People want to get home, it’s late on a Sunday, people want to go to bed. We wanted to pick up our dog from the dogsitter as soon as possible.”

Unfortunately for the couple, they were stuck in line for more than half an hour. According to Kaplan, people were honking, getting out of their cars, agitating, and yelling about the blockage.

Kaplan said that the works in IT and understands that payment systems are not always reliable. And while the outage was less than ideal, it allowed him to circumvent the $90 fee he owed.

Taking control

After a while, passengers in the parking lots took matters into their own hands. About 300 drivers banded together and pushed the parking arms out of the way and drove through the exits. Nagel said that the actions didn’t damage the equipment.

An additional 700 drivers were let through after employees got fed up with the situation and let them pass through without charging them. The lost revenue for the roughly 1,000 drivers that left without paying cost the airport $68,000.

Denver Airport

Photo: Nate Hovee | Shutterstock

Nagel said, “Any revenue loss is a big deal for us.” But reiterated that their focus was on customer satisfaction and that the bigger issue was the bad customer service. Nagel said that employees were not trained for such a situation and will ensure that the airport will re-train employees to deal with equipment failures in the future

About DEN

Since opening in 1995, Denver International Airport
has consistently been one of the busiest airports in the world. The airport serves more than 213,200 passengers daily. Last year, the airport served a total of 77.8 million passengers, a 12.3% increase from 2022. This made it the third busiest airport in the US and the sixth busiest airport globally.

It is the primary economic driver for the city of Colorado, generating roughly $36.4 billion in annual economic impact for the state. It is also the largest airport site in North America by area and the second largest in the world. The space allows it to host 31,000 cars in its public parking areas.

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