An airline pilot says she was forced to sleep in an airplane overnight after her flight diverted to a remote Colorado town due to severe weather

• A SkyWest Airlines flight crew that diverted to Hayden, Colorado on July 17 was forced to sleep on their plane overnight.
• Jessica Taylor, the flight's captain, reported that it was a first in her 15-year career.
• SkyWest said no hotels were available in Hayden and apologized for the inconvenience to passengers.
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A flight crew's routine trip from Denver to Raleigh, North Carolina and back ended in an overnight stay onboard their plane after diverting to Hayden, Colorado due to "severe weather."

SkyWest Airlines was operating flight 5332 from Raleigh to Denver on behalf of United Express, the regional brand for United Airlines, on July 17 when the diversion occurred. Flight tracking data from Flightradar 24shows the aircraft making a series of turns and flying in a holding pattern before eventually heading to Hayden by way of Nebraska and Wyoming.

Jessica Taylor, the flight's captain, described the ordeal on a LinkedIn following the flight.

"This has been a challenging week of flying," Taylor wrote in a LinkedIn post. "After flying 8+ hours from Den-Rdu-Den (well Hayden after diverting) my crew and had to sleep on the airplane overnight …. Yes that's right we slept on the floor of the airplane in Hayden."

SkyWest didn't confirm Taylor's account but told Insider that hotel accommodations were not available in Hayden.

"Though we worked to make arrangements to get our customers to their destinations that evening, unfortunately the nearby area did not have hotel accommodations available under the circumstances," SkyWest said in a statement to Insider. "We, along with our partners at United, apologized and United has reached out to customers to provide compensation for the inconvenience."

Taylor's aircraft, an Embraer E170 regional jet registered as N613UX, eventually departed for Denver the next afternoon and landed nearly 24 hours after it left Raleigh, according to Flightradar 24 data. Its next scheduled flight from Denver to Idaho Falls, Idaho was also canceled.

The round-trip journey between Denver and Raleigh is scheduled at just over eight hours from takeoff to landing back in Denver, including the layover in Raleigh. In Taylor's case, the same crew operated both legs of the trip.

For Taylor, the incident was the first time that she had been forced to spend the night on board an airplane due to a lack of accommodations.

"This is a first for me in 15+ years of professionally flying," Taylor wrote on LinkedIn. "I personally never thought I'd find myself sleeping on the floor of a plane as 38 year old airline captain."

The Embraer E170 does have a first class cabin with recliner seats but the aircraft isn't meant for overnight sleeping. United says that first class seats on the aircraft are 24 inches wide with 38 inches of pitch and six inches of recline.

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Despite the ordeal, Taylor remained in high spirits about her profession and the unique perspective it offers.

"But it still leaves me speechless how freaking beautiful this world is from 36,000 ft," Taylor wrote. "Always find thankfulness."