Three days after a cyber outage that canceled and disrupted flights worldwide it's still a mess at MSP Airport.
More than 100 flights have been affected according to Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman Jeff Lea, and it's unclear when operations will return to normal.
"It does take a few days to un-kink. Think of a winter storm," says Lea. "We've had obviously many, over the many years, and we get a mass cancellation. It usually takes a few days for airlines to sort of unravel and get back to normal operating a condition."
Many stranded fliers have been sleeping at the airport, where Lea says extra staff was brought in over the weekend to keep the bathrooms clean and the concessions open.
Industry-watchers say most of the flight issues nationwide have involved Delta Airlines, with more than 1,600 delayed and canceled systemwide as of midday Monday.
Thrifty Traveler's Kyle Potter says the Delta disruptions are not a result of the cyber outage, but are specific to Delta Airlines.
"These disruptions are not due to Friday's CrowdStrike outage. Not anymore. This is now a Delta problem, and a Delta problem alone. They need to own it," Potter explained on X.
Frustrated travelers have been reporting on social media that they weren't even able to get a hotel room or rental car due to increased demand with the number of events in the Twin Cities this weekend.
It'll be up to the airlines to get caught up in this situation, something Lea says they're working hard on.
"They're the ones that are having to kind of un-kink this issue and get the right crews and the right aircraft to the right airport, and to basically transport those passengers and squeeze them out on flights that may already be booked," said Lea.
Lea says it's still important to double-check your flight status before getting to the airport.
"It's also why we're recommending, you know, that people continue to have direct contact with their airline about the latest flight status," Lea explained. "However you do contact them, whether that's web or app or phone or text just to make sure that you have the latest information before you head out to the airport."
The airline struggling the most to get caught up is Delta, which uses MSP as one of the main hubs for the air carrier.
For a fourth straight day, Delta struggled to recover from the worldwide technology outage caused by a faulty software update. It stranded tens of thousands of passengers and drew unwanted attention from the federal government.
Other carriers were returning Monday to nearly normal levels of service disruptions, intensifying the glare on Delta’s relatively weaker response to the outage that hit airlines, hospitals and businesses around the world.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke to Delta CEO Ed Bastian on Sunday about the airline’s high number of cancellations since Friday. Buttigieg said his agency had received “hundreds of complaints” about Delta, and he expects the airline to provide hotels and meals for travelers who are delayed and to issue quick refunds to customers who don’t want to be rebooked on a later flight.
“No one should be stranded at an airport overnight or stuck on hold for hours waiting to talk to a customer service agent,” Buttigieg said. He vowed to help Delta passengers by enforcing air-travel consumer-protection rules.
Delta has canceled more than 5,500 flights since the outage started early Friday morning, including at least 700 flights canceled on Monday, according to aviation-data provider Cirium. Delta and its regional affiliates accounted for about two-thirds of all cancellations worldwide on Monday, including nearly all the ones in the United States.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.