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The Kansas City Chiefs are one of the best football teams in the National Football League (NFL) in the 2024–2025 season. The team, which plays at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, was founded in the late 1950s over 65 years ago.
The team has found incredible success over recent years, including winning a Super Bowl Championship in 2019, 2022, and 2023.
The team will look to record a three-peat Super Bowl Championship this year ahead of the NFL playoffs.
The Chiefs, led by famous quarterback Patrick Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid, have already secured a record of 15 wins and one loss heading into the last week of the NFL regular season.
This was good enough for the team to secure the number one overall seed in the American Football Conference (AFC) of the NFL ahead of the playoffs beginning.
The Kansas City Chiefs will look to close out this year's NFL regular season against the Denver Broncos, an AFC-West rival, on Sunday, January 5th.
The Chiefs will be visitors at Denver's Mile High Stadium to play the Broncos, who have nine wins and seven losses and need a win to secure a playoff spot ahead of the regular season finale.
However, the Chiefs are having difficulty traveling from Kansas City, Missouri, to Denver, Colorado, ahead of this matchup.
On the afternoon of Saturday, January 4th, officials at the Kansas City International Airport (KCI), where the Chiefs had chartered their flight from, announced a temporary closure of the airport due to ice accumulation and a blizzard warning.
This resulted in the Chief's chartered aircraft, a United Airlines Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, being stranded on the tarmac for several hours.
The Kansas City Chiefs were originally scheduled to depart Kansas City International Airport (KCI) at approximately 14:00 local time.
This would allow them to reach Denver International Airport (DEN) by 14:45 local time, after an approximate flight of one hour and forty-five minutes.
The team had pushed up their flight several hours due to incoming weather conditions around the Kansas City metro area.
However, the aircraft that the team chartered was slightly delayed from arriving at KCI, which pushed back their departure time.
This ultimately led to the aircraft on the tarmac when the airport was forced to close.
At approximately 14:50 local time, officials at the KCI airport announced that they would temporarily close the runways and the airport itself due to icy conditions.
Specifically, the airport was set to close for several hours due to ice accumulation, which led to the Kansas City Chiefs chartered aircraft stranded on the tarmac ahead of its departure.
The airport closure came amidst warnings of a major winter storm that was set to hit the Kansas City metro area on the evening of Saturday, January 4th, and last through most of the day on Sunday, January 5th.
The National Weather Service has forecast blizzard conditions with heavy snow and wind gusts expected to reach up to 40 miles per hour.
Overall, the closure of the Kansas City airport lasted approximately two hours before it was reopened at approximately 17:00 local time.
The Chiefs' chartered flight was finally able to take off at approximately 17:20 local time, about three and a half hours passed its originally scheduled departure time.
This should allow the aircraft to arrive in Denver at approximately 17:45 local time, according to Flightradar24.
To fly from Kansas City International Airport (KCI) to Denver International Airport (DEN) ahead of their game against the Broncos, the Kansas City Chiefs chartered a United Airlines Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. The Chiefs aircraft was scheduled to operate flight UA3814 from Kansas City to Denver.
However, the aircraft was late arriving at the Kansas City airport. It was originally scheduled to fly from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Kansas City on flight UA3774.
This flight was scheduled to depart LAX at 06:15 and arrive at KCI at 11:30 local time. However, it did not depart until 08:25 local time, which meant it did not land until 12:49 local time in Kansas City.
This led to several delays ahead of the Chiefs' flight to Denver, meaning that the team was unable to take off before the storm began to hit the area and ice began to accumulate.
The aircraft that the Chiefs chartered is a United Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner registered as N26960. According to ch-aviation, the aircraft was originally built in 2015 and delivered to United Airlines in November 2015.
