Nationwide ground stop lifted Friday evening

This is Fox 9 News at 9. After hours and hours, the nationwide ground stop is lifted tonight. At about 8.15, flights were able to take off once again after being grounded for about four hours. It will still take quite some time and maybe days to get all the flights running normally once again. Good evening, everyone. I'm Karen Scullin. According to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, there was a massive communication outage. Duffy and the DHS Secretary saying tonight it was caused by new technology being used as a patch. In an outdated air traffic control system. Again, that ground stop, though, lifted just after 8 o'clock tonight. Fox 9's Mike Manzoni and Maury Glover have been out at MSP International Airport all afternoon. And Maury has some passenger reaction for us tonight. But first, let's go to Mike, live outside, where he's been watching what's happening on the tarmac and the runways out there. Have you seen any flights take off yet, Mike? Yes, several. In fact, there's one right now, a Delta flight taking off right behind me. Just one of several that have taken off within the last 90 minutes or so. It did not take long for things to get back up and running here after they lifted that ground stop around 7.15 or so local time. Throughout the night, planes could land and we saw some of that, but they could not take off for several hours and that was causing a bit of a backup here. There were really, it didn't appear to be anywhere to put all the planes. So at one point there was a staging area here along the, at the edge of the airport where they were kind of just directing planes to just sit while they apparently waited for a gate. We have some video. This was from just before 8 o'clock, so about 45 minutes or so after that ground stop was lifted. That was the first plane that we saw take off. The one you see here was a Delta flight that took off from MSP around 7.55 tonight. And since then, we've seen several more. Things appear to be running fairly smoothly, at least considering what happened today And the ground stop that kind of... You know, kept everything, kept planes grounded for several hours, what, four or five hours or so. Planes continue to land. They also continue to take off. You just saw one at the beginning of our hit there and then the one earlier. So things are getting back to normal. But, of course, that will be a slow process. We're live at MSP tonight. Mike Manzoni, Fox 9. All right, Mike, thank you. And as we know, and as we've been saying, the ground stop was lifted. But that doesn't mean all is back to normal. In fact, the hours-long stoppage will likely have an impact on travelers over the next couple of days. Fox 9's Maury Glover has been inside MSP talking with people just trying to get where they need to go. Needless to say, Maury, it's been a long afternoon and evening for many of them. That's right. I spoke to one passenger who'd been here since 1.30 and he just left a little while ago and his wife picked him up. He spent seven hours here at the airport without ever getting to leave to go to his destination, which was Brazil. Now, passengers I talked to say they are happy to hear that the ground stop was lifted, but some weren't very optimistic that they would be able to get out of here tonight. It was canceled and I'm just waiting for them to reschedule now. It's up in the air, so I'm just waiting to hear from them. And are you hopeful or optimistic that you'll be able to get out of here tonight? Or what do you think will happen? Not tonight. I mean, I'm hopeful that I can get a flight tomorrow. So that's what I'm hoping for. You seem pretty mellow. You've been here. What time was your flight supposed to take off? 4:30, so I've been here since 1:30. So it's been a while, but there's no reason to stress out, right? I mean, it's not going to change anything. I think so. Now a spokesman for the MAX said that people have been, you know, they had made contingency plans for if people had to sleep here at the airport overnight. I'm not sure kind of the status of those plans since the ground stop has been lifted. But there are some folks who are just kind of hanging out and waiting to hear if their flight got, if their flight that was delayed will kind of take off as planned or delayed more or will eventually get canceled. They're just kind of having to wait and see what happens. Karen, back to you. Right, just needing some answers at this point. When will they get out of there, right? All right, thanks, Maury.