FAA equipment issues disrupted flights across the region on Thursday afternoon, sending delays through Eppley Airfield, Lincoln Airport and MSP Airport as airlines tried to sort out schedules. Eppley told passengers to check their flight status, while Lincoln listed delayed flights and MSP said some operations were starting to move again.
Just after 4 p.m., Eppley’s website showed several flight delays and one cancellation. By 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Lincoln listed two delayed flights on its website. Those numbers show how quickly the problem spread, even before the recovery had fully taken hold.
The disruption was tied to air traffic control issues that affected airports throughout the region, including OMA. Lincoln said its delays were related to problems in Minnesota and that it believed the radar issues had been corrected, with flights getting ready to leave again in Minneapolis. MSP confirmed at 4:16 p.m. on X that airlines were beginning to resume some operations after an FAA equipment outage.
That did not mean the afternoon was over for travelers. MSP said some flight impacts were expected to continue through the evening as airlines recovered, which left passengers facing a moving target: one airport showing flights ready to go again, another still posting delays, and the broader region still working through the fallout from equipment trouble that had not fully cleared.
For travelers, the safest move on Thursday was simple: check with the airline before heading to the airport. The sharper question now is not whether the system started to recover — it did — but how long it will take before the regional schedule settles back into something close to normal.
