Travel woes and Delta delays continue, but may be easing at MSP airport

By Peter Cox, Minnesota Public Radio News

After several days of canceled and delayed flights, Delta Airlines was edging toward normal operation at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The airline, dominant at the Twin Cities airport, struggled to come back from the effects of a software glitch that snarled air travel across the country.

According to FlightAware , about 16 percent of Delta’s flights in and out of MSP were canceled Tuesday. On Sunday, about 40 percent of Delta flights were canceled.

Some travelers spent days trying to get to destinations.

Julie and Tim O’Meara from Fort Myers, Fla., spent some time at a cabin near Alexandria and planned to fly back Sunday evening. Their flight was delayed several times before being canceled. The next day they got in the rebooking line.

“And we stood in that line for almost eight hours straight. And when we finally got to the front, there really wasn’t much they could do for us,” Tim O’Meara said. “We ended up getting standby on a flight that night, and that flight was canceled, this would be Monday night now.”

They got tickets on an Atlanta flight later that night, but around 10 p.m. the plane encountered mechanical issues and they remained on the ground.

Even with tickets on Delta, Tim also bought two refundable tickets on Spirit just to make sure they can get home.

Similar stories played out over the last several days at MSP and at airports across the country.

The cancellations started because a faulty update by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike crashed systems across many industries. Delta’s scheduling system was affected, which caused trouble moving pilots and flight attendants to needed flights.

“We’ve got everyone around the company working around the clock to get this operation where it needs to be,” a Monday statement on the airline’s website quoted Delta CEO Ed Bastian.

Christopher Hughes is a Delta captain and spokesperson for the Air Line Pilots Association, a pilots union.

“We’re as frustrated as anyone in this situation. The same difficulties that our passengers face getting in contact with someone from the company are the same challenges we face as we try to help them recover the operation,” Hughes said.

More than 5,500 flights have been canceled by the airline in the last five days.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday his department’s office of aviation opened an investigation into Delta Airlines because of the widespread disruptions.

Noemi Lopez and her two co-workers slept on cushions outside of the security lines at the airport. They’d been scheduled to fly back to Los Angeles after a work trip to Minneapolis.

“I didn’t know if I wanted to go to sleep or not because I was scared. This was my first time, my first adventure, being outside just camping here with my co-workers,” Lopez said.

Rosemary Cernech and her two children were scheduled to fly back to Florida on early Sunday morning. Their next flight out two days later, was canceled, as well as the next flight after that.

“I’m a teacher so we have appointments during the summer, all of those I have to keep calling and rescheduling and canceling, like the dentist called this morning and I’m like ‘We’re not coming!’ But we have family here so that’s been nice. There was a good side, thankfully,” Cernech said.

“But it’s been a long time away from home.”

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