MINNEAPOLIS — The tears start comin' and they don't stop for Delta Air Lines, as flights continue to be affected by cancellations and delays amid a new investigation into the debacle, opened by the U.S Department of Transportation Tuesday.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg announced the news on X (formerly Twitter), saying "airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly" in response to the ongoing disruptions sparked by a global internet outage last week.
KARE 11's Kent Erdahl was at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Tuesday, where he reported as of 1:30 p.m., Delta was behind 80 of MSP's 83 flight cancellations — and another 136 delays.
As far as moving folks through departures, arrivals, and baggage claim service counters, Erdahl said wait times have significantly improved over the last four days.
According to some travelers, even Monday's wait times took hours. Erdahl said the apparent increase in Delta employees staffed Tuesday at MSP could be somewhat responsible for the shift.
While the dust over the fiasco seems to slowly be settling, travelers said they're now dealing with another facet of the fallout: lost baggage. Erdahl talked with several families at MSP who said they've struggled to locate their luggage, which in many instances, got stuck somewhere along the route from travelers' respective origins, or arrived without their owners to their intended destinations.
The mess started Friday and snowballed over the weekend after a worldwide internet disruption not only grounded planes but took bank and hospital systems offline, among other industries.
Officials determined cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike was to blame for the failure, with the company claiming it resulted from the deployment of a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.
In a statement to Delta employees on Monday, CEO Ed Bastian said he thought it'd still be at least "another couple days" before he's confident the company can put the blunder behind them.
“Today will be a better day than yesterday, and hopefully Tuesday and Wednesday will be that much better again,” he said.
The Atlanta-based airline — with a major hub operating out of MSP — said it's offering travel vouchers to affected customers.
For those details, visit Delta's website.