MINNEAPOLIS — Travel woes continue as people try to get out of Minneapolis.
Landon Prowant and Amber Robins planned a family trip to Spokane, WA a year ago. Minneapolis is as close to Spokane as they’ll get.
“Our flight got cancelled as soon as we got here,” Prowant said.
“We waited in line for four hours, literally four hours on the dot to get up, to find a new flight, no flights, none, to anywhere,” Robins said.
They flew out of Detroit, MI on a Delta plane early Sunday morning. Now, they’ll be spending the next three nights in Minnesota.
“Everything’s on us besides the flight. They’re reimbursing us for the flight. No meal voucher, no hotel voucher,” Prowant said.
Today, 81 flights have been cancelled out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and 159 flights have been delayed, according to MSP.
Prowant and Robins will have to stay here without most of their things.
“We also can’t find our luggage. We can’t find it. I mean everything, all of our clothes is in our luggage, everything is in our luggage,” Robins said.
They’re stuck in a state Sheri O’Brien wishes she was stuck in. Her home is in Bloomington, MN. O’Brien flew to Jacksonville, FL for a girls trip last Sunday. All of her friends have made it back home, except for her.
“Yesterday was a nightmare. An absolute nightmare,” she said.
She was supposed to fly home on Friday, but her flight got cancelled and rebooked for Saturday. She was at the airport for over 10 hours.
“At first it became kind of a joke where ‘ok, no big deal’ and there was a big hopefulness when the flight crew got there and they said ‘we’re just waiting on one other flight member and then we’ll be able to get out of here’ and then it was kind of like this balloon deflating as the hours kind of ticked by,” she said.
O’Brien said she got about seven Delta notifications telling her that her flight was delayed. She said her flight was cancelled around 9:15 p.m. O’Brien then had to wait in line to get a ticket home. She’s scheduled to fly out of Florida Monday night.
“I was lucky enough, I heard many people in the area did not get hotel vouchers, I did. Then I went downstairs to baggage claim that was a disaster,” she said.
MSP reports 105 arrival flights have been cancelled today, and 119 have been delayed.
In a message to customers, Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian said “cancellations continue on Sunday as Delta’s teams work to recover our systems and restore our operation. Canceling a flight is always a last resort, and something we don't take lightly. The technology issue occurred on the busiest travel weekend of the summer, with our booked loads exceeding 90%, limiting our reaccommodation capabilities.”
The Bookers are trying to get back to Missoula, Montana where they live.
“We got here at 8 or 9, got to our gate, our flight got delayed, got delayed by 15 minutes, then 30 minutes, and then it got cancelled,” Nick Booker said.
He said the hallways are crowded at the gates.
“People are sleeping in the hallways back there on cots, it’s chaotic, it’s very chaotic,” he said.
Booker said they didn’t board the plan, but other people did. He’s traveling with his wife and 16-month-old son. He said he’s grateful they didn’t check their son’s car seat. They decided to drive back home, after they waited in line to rebook their flight for an hour.
“My folks we’re going to be driving out in a couple of weeks, so we’re just going to take their car that they were going to tow behind their RV,” he said.
The Bookers have a 17-hour car ride ahead of them, but luckily, he and his wife don’t have to look far for a smile, courtesy of their son.
“He’s just so happy. He doesn’t care what’s going on. He’s just along for the ride,” he said.
Alison French is another passenger trying to get home to Rhinelander, WI. She’s a veterinarian and has clients to see on Monday. Her flight out of Orlando, FL was cancelled yesterday.
“I had to book other airlines, so I flew Allegiant Air from Orlando this morning at 6am to Syracuse, New York I flew Sun Country to Minneapolis, and now I hopefully I get on Delta and go to Rhinelander but they’ve delayed that an hour now too,” French said.
She said Delta is the only airline she can fly to get home.
“Oh, it’s been frustrating, very frustrating,” she said. “Delta, they wouldn’t answer the phone, they wouldn’t help me in person. They wouldn’t do anything.”
Many travelers told KARE 11 they waited for hours on the phone or in line to speak with a Delta representative.