MSP Airport flights recovering after nationwide ground stop

To have inconsistency in the data from the radars and our communication with airplanes. Our routers actually got overloaded with data, and because of that, we shut the system down. Those systems back up and running at our nation's airports this morning after the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years. The Trump administration blaming, as you heard, overloaded and outdated systems for yesterday's pause. And Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy saying he cannot guarantee it won't happen again. But as of now, things are slowly returning to normal. More than 3,500 planes We're in the sky at the time of the stoppage yesterday. You can see them all there. Thankfully, all flights were safely landed. Over 800 of them had to be diverted. 700 were sent back and over 150 were redirected to another airport that was not there. destination that they had originally planned. Despite the stop being lifted last night, over 2,500 flights are still canceled across the U.S. today as airlines work to regroup. According to FlightAware, there are 131 cancellations at MSP this morning. Most of them are Delta flights. Many passengers arriving back here at home later than expected, some spending the night at the airport last night. That's where we find Emily Pofall, who is live at MSP International this morning with the very latest talking to. Some tired and some frustrated passengers. Good morning, Emily. Yeah, good morning. And like you mentioned, a slow return to normal is what we're seeing here this morning. Emphasis on slow. This help desk line behind me has been long all morning, though I can say in the last hour and a half or so that I've been here, I have seen them slowly kind of Triaging, working through the people that are standing in line here in speaking to the people that were able to make it all the way through. It seems like it was about an hour to an hour and a half wait. So anyone coming for a flight knowing that you're going to have to be in this line should definitely get here very early. We've seen some of the people that are able to get their new flight information actually get to security now. The security lines went through Through a phase where they were pretty long, about 30 minutes. minutes ago. Now those wait times have started to come back down. So signs that things are moving forward, even as there are still many people here that are very frustrated, very tired and don't really know exactly what the plan is yet. We spoke with one couple that was here from Canada. They got to the airport here at 1 p.m. ish, they said yesterday. And then the ground stop happened. They wound up stuck here. They spent the night in the airport. And I just heard them on the phone with the airline for about an hour or so, still waiting for their information there. I spoke with another group that had come here, were on their way back from France. This was the last leg of their flight. They were supposed to make it home yesterday, but they weren't able to. And they wound up having to spend $800 on a hotel. They said they got the last room in the hotel that they booked. And then I spoke with another man whose flight home was diverted here. He says that he's very tired at this point, had to go to a hotel, get a couple hours of sleep, then come back to the airport early this morning. He wanted to get here really early because he had to wait in this line here before he was able to make his flight. Take a listen. We had a It was a 5 o'clock flight out of Detroit, so it was like right when the ground flight stop happened. We were stuck there until like 11.30 is when we took off. Wow. Were you happy to have made it here, or how were you feeling? We were happy to make it somewhere, yes. It was good to see that the flight ground got lifted, that things were starting to move. Yeah, was this always part of your travel plans? No, we had a direct flight to our final destination, and then things got rerouted. Just trying to make it home now. Also with some shifting plans this morning, the Gophers, they were supposed to fly out for their game at Penn State. Scheduled for later today. They were supposed to fly out yesterday. We know that they were sitting on their charter plane on the tarmac, getting ready to leave. When the ground stop happened, they wound up having to deplane, went back to campus. We do know, though, we're told that they're supposed to fly out this morning. They're supposed to still make it to Penn State sometime within the next hour or so. Their flight is supposed to leave. No word yet on if their game time is adjusted at all. All right, Emily Pofau, live at MSP this morning. Thank you, so many factors in this. Well, to that point about sports, the Trump administration says it is working with the NCAA so they can prioritize flights for today's games. And while even though the ground stoppage is over, it will be several days before air travel is completely back to normal. We spoke with a pilot who described what we could expect moving forward. And it's gonna be, this is not gonna be resolved quickly. This is gonna be days and days, if not weeks, of getting. The network put back together, the airlines getting all of these stranded passengers to where they need to go, getting the normalcy, the normal operating environment back. Because these airplanes, every single one of these airplanes is meant to be somewhere else tomorrow. They're not meant to be where they're at today, every single one of them, thousands and thousands and thousands of aircraft and crews. It's gonna take a long time to get that all back As we mentioned earlier, possibly up to a million people have been affected by this ground stop with 100 cancellations, more than 100 cancellations as of this morning at MSP. Delta is the main airline canceling flights there today, but the airline says affected passengers do have some options. Passengers with flights yesterday or today can change their flight to a different date at no extra cost. Delta says new flights must be taken on or before November 21st to be eligible for the waived fare difference. This is just one of the many airlines offering waivers and vouchers in response to the ground stop. But passengers are also legally entitled to refunds or reimbursements if they do not want to reschedule. So lots to factor in depending on what your situation is. My goodness.