Kansas City Chiefs helmet Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

The Kansas City Chiefs are preparing for their season-ending matchup against the Denver Broncos on Sunday afternoon, but they made a pretty costly mistake in their travel plans.

Harold R. Kuntz of Fox 4 Kansas City reported that a broken de-icing machine at the Kansas City airport has caused major 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 are among those affected by the disruption. NFL insider Ian Rapoport revealed that the team was stuck on the runway for hours.

“And the #Chiefs still haven’t left yet. Four hours on the runway,” Rapoport posted at 6 p.m. on Saturday.

While the Chiefs can’t exactly control the weather, they certainly could have made accommodations ahead of time.

People were interested in these podcasts

The winter weather had been predicted for days, and the storm did not catch anyone by surprise. So the fact that the Chiefs waited until late in the day to leave was a pretty major mistake – and the Chiefs were blasted for it.

“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 result of this game won’t affect their postseason plans. Kansas City has already clinched the No. 1 seed in the AFC Playoffs, regardless of Sunday’s outcome.

[Ian Rapoport]