Wednesday marked the fourth straight day of travel misery at Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU).

Airports across the country are experiencing delays with storms, heat, wildfire smoke and staffing shortages. So far at RDU, there were at least 17 delayed arrivals and a handful of cancellations.

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The FAA said Wednesday their travel traffic report is low, much better than Monday and Tuesday. The most delays Wednesday, according to the FAA, stemmed from New York, Chicago, Charlotte and Newark.

Flight Aware was reporting 18,000 delays across the country with United Airlines having the most. United is also reporting a major shortage of air traffic controllers.

Travel experts said it's a good idea to arrive 1.5 to 2 hours early for your flight during the holiday weekend.

"The key is to get ahead of it," said travel expert David Fleming. "Get to the airport early."

Flying solo

On Wednesday, Phil Stringer told WRAL News he drove to Raleigh to catch a flight to Detroit after having a rough go of things flying to Charlotte over the weekend.

Stringer said he was scheduled to be on a flight out of Oklahoma City on Sunday at 6:20 a.m. That flight was delayed seven times within 18 hours.

"I wanted to avoid the Charlotte airport," Stringer said.

When it finally came time for departure, Stringer was the lone passenger on board the flight headed for Charlotte. A TikTok video of his experience got more than 40 million views.

"At 11:30 p.m. someone comes up to me, there is no one in the airport and she is like 'are you on this Charlotte flight?'" Stringer said. "I was like yeah, she said 'the plane got there finally.'"

Stringer, who said he's from Greensboro, got home around 7 a.m. from Oklahoma City, took a shower and went straight to work without sleeping. Despite the pre-boarding turbulence, Stringer maintained a positive outlook on the whole thing.

"We are gonna be positive about this; we are gonna turn a bad situation into a fun one," he said.

Also involving Charlotte Douglas International Airport, A Delta flight had to make an emergency landing on Wednesday morning without the nose gear. No one was hurt.

Helping stranded passengers

On Monday, volunteers with the United Service Office (USO) came to RDU to help stranded active, reserve and retired service members with the delays.

At a room in terminal 2, they set up a station for service members to take a nap, get a bite to eat or just relax.

"If any service members are traveling and are stranded, we will be here for them tonight," said Chris Halsan, USO RDU Center Manager.

He said they provided hot meals, coffee and a place to sleep.

The scene for non-military passengers was a different story.

Rhonda Love waited from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. for her outbound flight to be rescheduled. She was offered a free dinner and hotel stay, if she had to stay the night. But she didn't have the resources to stay longer.

"We are not at home," Love said. "People get short on money. Things get expensive."

About 8,000 flights nationwide were delayed and nearly 900 were canceled as thunderstorms snarled air travel in and out of some of the country’s busiest airports.

Stormy night at the airport

Flight delays were already in the double digits on Tuesday morning at RDU after severe storms rolled across North Carolina overnight.

This comes after airports across the country were scrambling on Monday to accommodate passengers as bad weather nationwide – along with equipment problems – caused delays and cancellations to stack up.

Early Tuesday morning, the crowd at the check-in line for American Airlines at RDU was growing. Many in the crowd had to rebook after being stranded Wednesday.

There were already 15 flight cancellations and 16 delays as of 6 a.m. Wednesday – a ripple effect from the night before, when they had racked up 55 flights cancellations and 99 delays.

More than 7,800 flights across the country were impacted on Sunday.

Fleming said many are anticipating their flights getting canceled because of lagging infrastructure within airports and airlines.

"We are playing catchup with COVID," Fleming said. "Airlines don't have the infrastructure yet. They laid off people; FAA had layoffs as well."

"It’s a ripple effect."