The Kansas City Chiefs are gearing up for their season-ending matchup against the Denver Broncos on Sunday afternoon, but a significant error in their travel planning has proven costly.
Harold R. Kuntz of Fox 4 Kansas City reported that a malfunctioning de-icing machine at the Kansas City airport has caused substantial delays.
“More problems at KCI: We’ve received more messages and calls that the De-Icing machine at the airport is currently broken, delaying flights at this moment. Have been Informed of some flights being deverted to Omaha,” Kuntz shared in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The Chiefs were directly impacted by the issue, with NFL insider Ian Rapoport revealing that the team endured hours of delays on the runway.
“And the #Chiefs still haven’t left yet. Four hours on the runway,” Rapoport posted at 6 p.m. on Saturday.
While the weather itself is beyond their control, the Chiefs could have taken precautions ahead of time.
With winter weather forecasts warning of the storm days in advance, the decision to delay travel until later in the day has drawn sharp criticism from fans on social media.
“Broncos gonna get into the playoffs off a forfeit because the Chiefs didn’t check the weather report lol,” one person wrote on X.
“This has been forecasted for like 5 days. Why didn’t they leave early?” another asked.
“Wow, why wait until today to leave,” someone else questioned.
“Don’t understand how this happens. This weather has been talked about all week, totally expected. It didn’t start til 2PM,” another user wrote.
“Weather coming was known — maybe not QUITE this level but pretty close. How did they not leave first thing this morning instead/in case,” one person pointed out.
“It’s 2025. Weather predictions were unanimous that this storm was going to be a beast. How in the hell did they not just travel early?” another user expressed.
Fortunately for the Chiefs, the outcome of the game will not impact their postseason plans. Kansas City has already secured the No. 1 seed in the AFC Playoffs, regardless of Sunday’s result.
