Most flights at Lambert International Airport were delayed this morning after a system failure at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded thousands of flights. The FAA eventually got its systems up and running, but the cancellations and delays caused ripple effects that continued to prevent people from traveling.
Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge, Lambert's director, tells KMOX that by around 9 a.m. they had seen some aggressive takeoffs and landings.
"It was lifted at eight o'clock when the system had been restored. We saw seven cancellations thus far. And most of those were just to try to thin out the banks of some of our largest carriers where they have multiple flights into the same destination throughout the day. So it is resuming to normal but a lot of flights are still delayed. There's a backlog of everybody trying to get out."
Missouri Governor Mike Parson said earlier on Wednesday that he doesn't believe the situation was caused by a glitch, and that there's more to the situation than meets the eye. Hamm-Niebruegge said she had no information on that.
"I will tell you, throughout history, we have issues where some system has gone down. I mean, it's not common practice, but it certainly has happened in the past," she said. "And we all live in a world of technology right now. And when a system goes down, it goes down. But I have no information other than the system was down at this point."
It's been a chaotic few weeks for airlines, as Southwest just saw major cancellations and delays over the holidays due to a system shutdown. But Hamm-Niebruegge said that things had been going smoothly up until Wednesday morning.
Hear more about the situation with the FAA on Wednesday and how it affected Lambert travelers:
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