So his flight was TWO days later than originally booked. Yeah, mechanical probs for 2 days seems......unusual.
Since the 17th flight would have been a Friday after school, I wonder if Dylan had things in Colorado Springs that he wanted to do over the weekend and really didn't want to go til Sunday night. Then to turn around and drive all the way back 2 days later, I can only imagine what he might have thought of that.
Except that there aren't going to be a ton of flights into Durango, it isn't exactly O'Hare ... and it was the weekend before a holiday ... and it was stated that they had some specific requirements for the flights ... so if the original flight was canceled due to mechanical issues, it certainly might have taken a day or so to find another appropriate flight.
I flew from Salt Lake to Denver the other day, and the man on the plane next to me was trying to get to Medford OR, and he had been delayed a full 28 hours because of a "mechanical" issue. Sometimes I think that is airline-speak for "There weren't enough paying customers on this flight, so we canceled it and filled up some other planes instead." If you are going into a less-traveled airport, it can really take a while to rearrange things.