BANGOR – Julie Dedam and her family weathered a blizzard, icy roads and a five-hour drive from Quebec to meet her younger sister flying in from Florida at Bangor International Airport.

“Where is everything?” Dedam, 39, a firefighter and mom from Listuguj, Quebec, asked as she scanned BIA recently for TV monitors to give her family flight information.

There were no monitors listing arrival and departure times – no place near the airport’s eight gates to find out quickly about delays or cancellations.

Since January, the monitors and the system that runs them have been out of order. A replacement system could be in place as early as this summer, an airport official said.

Airport Director Rebecca Hupp said last week that the $75,000 cost to replace the monitors is part of a $557,000 project going out to bid that also is supposed to result in new cameras and a new security system at BIA.

“Certainly, we hope to have them in place this summer,” she said.

Hupp said the old TV monitors had been working around the clock for more than 10 years before their failure.

At night, getting up-to-date flight information can be hard for travelers, with some airline counters empty and the boards behind the counters listing only standard arrival and departure information.

A few seats down from the Dedams, Anne Kirk, 52, read a book last week while her husband, Larry Kirk, also 52, walked around as they waited for a flight from Boston. On it was Larry’s mother, Maria, who had spent six weeks in the Bahamas.

The couple came from St. Stephen, New Brunswick, to pick her up and said they were surprised that an airport calling itself international didn’t have monitors.

“At an international airport you’d think there would be one, wouldn’t you?” Anne Kirk said.

It’s not just those waiting for flights who use the monitors. Bangor police Officer Dan Scripture has been at the airport since 1990, even before the old monitors were installed, and said that they help him keep tabs on flights, in case he’s needed.

Even when there were monitors, Scripture was sometimes a magnet for people wanting to know flight information, something he gladly gave when he could. Without the monitors, he has been asked even more often, “abundantly more,” he said.

While the presence of the monitors may be a comfort for some people and their absence disconcerting, the president of the Air Travelers Association said relying on the monitors can be a problem. Some monitors aren’t always kept current, said the association’s David Stempler, who recalled running through another airport with his family and arriving at a gate at the scheduled time only to find that the flight had left 20 minutes earlier.

“I’ve been burned and I’ve learned not to rely on the monitors,” Stempler said. He recommends that travelers check the automated systems, which many airlines have accessible by phone.

In the meantime, Hupp said, there are other ways to get the information, although she acknowledged that they aren’t as convenient as the monitors.

The airline offices, when staffed, can provide that information.

American Airlines, which runs its American Eagle flights out of BIA, routinely posts paper arrival and departure times to the now empty monitor frames.

Car rental employees, who did not want to be identified, said that American Airlines and US Airways employees are good about updating them about flights and they then can relay information to people who ask.

Flight arrivals are supposed to be announced on the public address system, Hupp noted, although Julie Dedam said she heard no such announcement for her sister’s flight, which she later learned her sister missed because her flight from Florida was delayed.

The Dedams would have to wait for a later flight. Larry Kirk was more fortunate: His mother arrived as scheduled.