Denver airport operating near capacity

Officials at Denver's airport expected to have all six runways cleared by Sunday after a two-day blizzard, but there was no telling when the backlog of holiday travelers would get out.

Thousands of passengers whose flights were canceled by a snowstorm that backed up air traffic nationwide were stuck on standby Saturday, trying to grab an empty seat on planes that were mostly booked.

"I just want to go home. I just want to see my family," said Jennifer Long of Denver, who hoped to catch a flight to New Orleans, which she left after Hurricane Katrina.

The busiest carrier at Denver International, United Airlines, planned to operate a full schedule of 900 departures and arrivals Saturday for the first time since the storm blew in Wednesday, burying the city in 2 feet of snow, spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said. Flights ran "close to on schedule," she said.

The airport, the nation's fifth-busiest, had five runways open Saturday and travelers jammed its terminals.

"You combine what would have been a busy holiday as it was, and you throw in a few thousand more stranded passengers, it's obviously busy," airport spokesman Steve Snyder said.

The jam backed up flights around the country heading into one of the busiest travel times of the year. About 9 million Americans planned to take to the air during the nine-day Christmas-to-New Year's period, according to AAA.

By Saturday, New York businessman Todd Pavlo and his 16-year-old son had spent two nights on benches at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. They waited through seven standby flights to Salt Lake City, where they were going to see family.

"At this rate, I'm going to be here well into January," said Pavlo, 47, who booked two one-way tickets to Salt Lake _ for $700 apiece _ on a flight leaving Sunday. "Now everybody is starting to get irate. ... We're all sitting together. We're actually living together following gate to gate all day long."

Overseas, fog had grounded flights for most of the week at London's Heathrow Airport, stalling tens of thousands of people at Europe's busiest airport. Heathrow officials said almost 95 percent of flights operated Saturday, after the fog finally lifted.

In South America, flight cancellations and hours-long delays caused by overbooking, equipment problems and bad weather continued haunting holiday travelers across Brazil. Even the Brazilian air force was called in Friday to help move passengers with its fleet of eight passenger jets after the problems started Tuesday.

In Denver, more than 3,000 incoming flights alone were canceled or diverted during the 45-hour shutdown. An estimated 4,700 travelers camped out at the airport at the peak of its closure.

Passengers with long-standing reservations filled most of Saturday's outbound flights. Airline officials told unhappy travelers that they cannot simply bring in extra planes to clear the backlog, and that it could be Christmas _ or later _ before they can catch a plane.

Jerry Escobedo, a contract worker at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, said he waited on hold for 90 minutes to talk to a Frontier Airlines agent to learn that the Seattle flight he was booked on for Christmas Eve was the earliest he was going to get.

"It's been an interesting experience, I guess you could say," he said. "You just have to make the best of it."

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Associated Press writer Laurel Jorgensen in Chicago contributed to this report.