By land or air, how one reporter returned to MSP — and sought compensation — amid Delta debacle

Delta Air Lines’ customers are now five days into travel disruptions in the wake of the widespread CrowdStrike technology outage, and many travel horror stories have hit close to home with Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport being one of the Atlanta-based carrier’s busiest hubs.

Business reporter Nick Williams has been covering the airline industry for the Star Tribune, and on Monday, editors turned to him for an update on the drama. But there was just one problem:

He and his family — his wife and children, ages 14 and 10 — were stranded at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport after Delta canceled their flight home Sunday night. Delta rescheduled that flight for 6:14 p.m. Tuesday; it ended up departing at 11:55 p.m. and landing at MSP at 2:11 a.m. Wednesday.

Williams’ story illustrates the complexities many travelers have experienced in recent days, and he also showcased the art of decision-making and how to seek compensation when facing such disruptions. As of Wednesday morning, Delta had deposited promised bonus miles into the family’s SkyMiles account, but a cash refund for the canceled rebooked flight had not yet posted.

When he logged on Tuesday, bleary-eyed and road-worn after arriving back to the Twin Cities at 2:30 a.m. via rental car, Williams faced a litany of questions from the business news desk.

I woke up Friday morning to a text from a friend who was in town. He actually lives in Dallas-Fort Worth. He was going to fly out at like 7:30 a.m. on American, and I told him, “Oh, we’re flying out a few hours later.” And he texted me earlier that morning, like, “Hey Nick, check your flight status. There’s an outage; all flights have been canceled.”

First thing I did was check the news, and I see what’s happening. And then our flight is still on time to leave, so we think we’re OK. But once we got to the airport Friday, we saw what was happening and realized how big of an issue it might be coming back home.

So departing, our plane was only delayed like 10 minutes, although they changed the gate four times.

As soon as we crossed the skyway bridge into the terminal, and we went down to the security checkpoint, we saw a person standing with a flag to mark where the line began, and it was almost immediately at the bottom of the escalator. ... So we saw that, and then once we walked past the security checkpoint and walked into the terminal, every once in a while, you’d see somebody just lying on the floor with their sweater over their face or somebody asleep in the chair. And then there are a couple of help desks and that line would be at least 50 people deep.

By 12 p.m. or 1 p.m. [on Sunday], they already told us our flight was delayed a half-hour. And by the time we got into the airport, it had been pushed back from originally 6:15 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., so we went and sat down and just waited. ... You could see the Delta board, and I would say 90% were either canceled or delayed, including ours.

We get to the gate maybe around 7:10, 7:15, and we’re standing there, and it’s not boarding, and that’s when the gate agent says, “There’s only one flight attendant here. There’s nothing we can do.” And at that point, I see the one flight attendant who was there, she walks through the crowd and starts talking to somebody [presumably another Delta employee, but not in uniform] by the vending machines. And he’s holding a tablet, and they’re looking through the tablet, and they’re talking, and I’m like, “What’s going on?” So I start googling “Delta, flight attendant, crew, software,” those words, and I see some stories about how Delta’s crew scheduling system was also impacted. So I’m just starting to piece it together myself, “OK, there’s a crew shortage issue because maybe the system’s impacting where crew people are supposed to be.” If only one person is here, where are the other two?

The plane was at the gate, the plane was sitting right there, and I guess the pilot was there, but it was just the crew that was missing.

When they told us the best they could do was Tuesday for Delta, at the same time as they were telling us that, my wife was looking at other airlines, and the earliest was several days away. And we were thinking, “Our kids have sports Tuesday. They really want to do that. Our dog is in boarding, and we’re paying for that by the day ... and then we can’t miss work.” So we were like, “If we leave as soon as possible, we’ll get home sooner.” So that’s why we made the decision to drive home. It was just about getting home.

I was doing most of the driving while [my wife] was on the phone with [Delta]. As far as right now, refunds and any compensation is still processing. Nothing is officially posted yet. They said up to 48 hours, and all of this started Monday about [early afternoon], the process of asking for the refund and compensation.

What we paid for the tickets and then additional compensation just because of the inconvenience. We told them we missed work, both of our kids missed sports on Monday. My son had a soccer game he couldn’t play in, and my daughter missed her volleyball camp day.

There’s a Delta reimbursement link they’re sending out to people. We haven’t started the process yet because we just caught up on what we had to pay for: that would include the extra day of dog lodging, the rental car, food and gas, an extra day of parking at MSP, another overnight stay for that. And we don’t know what they’ll cover.

Mostly the stories that we were hearing and seeing other people react to what happened. ... I heard one guy, I don’t know if he was going to Atlanta or trying to go somewhere else, but he was saying, “You know what? At this point, I’ll fly anywhere just to get out of here.”

We were in a Delta Lounge, and I think that kind of guarded us from what was happening at the gates, that type of stress. There were comfortable chairs, it was spacious, there was food and drinks. We let our son have, like, three sugar cookies.

We were there for a surprise birthday, so we just kept looking at all the photos of all the family we saw. ... We just kept focusing on the good stuff that we just experienced. That’s the best we could do. We were like, “You know what? We saw family. We’re going to get out of here.

“At some point.”