“I’m just, like, really stressing,” said one traveler heading back home from DSM International.
DES MOINES, Iowa —
After nearly four hours of grounding flights across the US, The F-A-A lifted the ground stop at 7:15 Central time on Friday.
On Friday, the Des Moines International Airport was filled with chaos and confusion. On Saturday people are still dealing with the consequences.
“I had got another flight today just to get here and get told that my flight is canceled, checked in and everything,” said truck driver Travis Howland. He has to wait at the airport until Sunday morning.
“It affects my plans really bad because I was trying to be in a loaner truck by tonight So I could get back rolling tomorrow,” said Howland. “Now I got to wait till Monday.”
Dale Chang’s delay in Des Moines will cause him to miss his connecting flight in Chicago.
“I’m having my wife’s father and my father in law drive me to Chicago, which is going to be a nice road trip, I guess.”
On top of that, Chang starts a new job on Monday in Madrid, Spain. “I’m just, like, really stressing,” he said.
On the other hand, Carla Brewer from Atlanta didn’t mind it too much.
“I was just able to spend a little extra time with my ninety year old mother,” said Brewer. “So that worked out well.”
The travelers had strong initial reactions to the news about the ground stop.
“I maybe thought we were, like, under attack, or we could have been. Or it could be like some new AI software that’s being deployed at the air traffic control service. Yeah. My thoughts were just everywhere,” said Chang.
“I’m not trying to go off whatever social media saying, but I’m like, whatever ya’ll are doing… fix it,” said Howland. “Because it’s ridiculous.”
“You do the first panic thing as far as was it cybersecurity? What was really happening?” said Brewer. “But I think they kind of alleviated those worries.”
At a news conference Friday night, The US Transportation and Homeland Security secretaries said the outage was caused by technology that overwhelmed an old control system.