United Express Passengers Were Stuck For Two Hours — So The Pilot Ordered Pizza To The Plane

Passengers aboard a United Express regional jet in Watertown, South Dakota waited more than two hours for permission to fly to Denver. Some were headed to a Noah Kahan concert, and they missed it, but it seems like that may have been their fault for scheduling too tight a trip. But the ordeal was made better when the captain ordered pizza to the plane. I came across this tweet and spent way too much time in a rabbit hole identifying the aircraft, route, and apparent backstory. Due to many many flight delays we missed the @NoahKahan concert last night. If you know anything about small town airports, this picture will make sense 😂 Shout out to our amazing @united pilot and crew who stayed positive the whole day! pic.twitter.com/wEhJwJAWmQ — Sam (@sammywhitesox) August 9, 2026 The flight appears to be United Express 5019 from Watertown, South Dakota to Denver on Saturday, August 8. It was operated by SkyWest Airlines using N904EV, a 2002 Bombardier CRJ-200LR 50-seat regional jet. The photo matches a CR2, and the plane’s flight history matches the story. The inbound aircraft left Denver for Watertown 66 minutes late, arriving at 6:04 p.m. The return flight to Denver was scheduled to depart at 6:27 p.m., so it had plenty of time scheduled to make up that delay. It doesn’t take long to turn a small regional jet. Unfortunately, it remained on the ground until 8:49 p.m., and departed 2 hours and 22 minutes late, finally landing in Denver at 9:11 p.m., an hour and 31 minutes late. Honestly not bad under the circumstances! Denver had a ground stop and ground delay program due to air traffic control staffing and high winds. The FAA was reporting an average 143-minute delay for flights departing for Denver. This flight left Watertown literally 142 minutes late. The ground stop included flights departing airports under Minneapolis Center air traffic control, whose territory includes Watertown. Aircraft had to wait at their origin until air traffic control releases them, instead of flying to Denver and entering a holding pattern. So with a long expected delay on the ground, they ordered pizza. It looks like the delivery came from Danger von Dempsey’s inside the terminal, which advertises that it “offer[s] service to the daily flights.” I assumed that just meant they’re open during hours before the airport’s two daily flights (the other is a 6:45 a.m. Minneapolis departure). But here they actually offer service to the daily flights! The travel plans were always tight. It looks like Noah Kahan’s Coors Field performance was scheduled to start at 8:30 p.m. and actually began at 8:45 p.m., ending at 11:05 p.m. Flight 5019’s scheduled 7:41 p.m. arrival allowed just 66 minutes to deplane and travel from Denver airport to the stadium. That’s a bold flight choice – flying to a concert with enough time to actually make the start only if the flight landed exactly on time, if the concert did also. But with only a single daily Denver flight, and the alternative without flying the night before a Watertown – Minneapolis – Denver connection Delta starting at 6:45 a.m., that’s the consequence of living in or around Watertown. In fact, the aircraft landed 26 minutes after Kahan had taken the stage. By the time passengers could get off the plane and reach downtown Denver, much of the show would have been over. Ordering pizza during delays isn’t actually that unusual. Here’s a Delta flight that diverted and had pizza delivered by police car. An American flight diverted and the pilot ordered 40 pizzas and ran out to meet the driver. Here on this American Eagle diversion, the captain had pizza delivered to the plane. Here American Airlines chose Pizza Hut as their caterer for the flight. There was a catering issue, so they bought the pizzas from the Pizza Hut in the terminal. Years ago I catered an American Airlines Boeing 757 from inside the Seattle airport. It was a charter flight (“oneworld MegaDO”) and our aircraft went mechanical. We’d had all of the catering for the flight offloaded because we wanted to make room for more alcohol (and because the original plan had been for everyone on the flight to get full business class meals, which took took long on our prior Dallas – Seattle segment). There were packaged snacks for everyone at the at the gate, but with the delay and drinks on the ground we needed food. We drank the plane dry during the delay and we raided the nearby aircraft for more. A tug was sent to the edge of the airport to go get more. I went into the terminal in search of food. First class got personal pizzas while I bribed the bagel shop to stay open to give us all their sandwiches (which meant staff they’d need to stay late to prep more). The station manager pulled out his airline-issued credit card, so I fortunately didn’t get stuck with the bill. The scene at the Seattle airport bagel place went something like Woody Allen feeding the revolutionary army in Bananas. Topics on this page