MSP sees cancellations, delays as storm drops snow on Twin Cities

Some flights at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport were canceled or delayed Wednesday as snow arrived with the Thanksgiving travel rush.

The airport recorded five canceled flights, including three departures, and more than 150 inbound and outbound delays, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.

As of noon Wednesday, roughly a third of arriving flights were landing within 15 minutes of their scheduled time, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company. About 89% of departing flights were leaving within 15 minutes of scheduled time, and about 75% were exactly on time.

A winter storm warning stretching up through Mankato, the Twin Cities and the North Shore expired at 9 a.m. The risk of late-morning accumulation early Wednesday faded as light snow moved eastward, according to the National Weather Service.

Early snowfall estimates tallied a few inches in the south metro, according to the National Weather Service, and about 3 inches in the north. Greater accumulation landed in other reaches of Minnesota, including 8 inches in Moose Lake and 5 inches in Duluth.

Further airport delays were possible. The Federal Aviation Administration listed MSP along with Chicago and Detroit among the cities where high winds could cause delays above 15 minutes. However, the FAA removed the airport from its list of potential planned ground delays in an air traffic control bulletin late Wednesday morning.

Airplanes were being sprayed with deicing fluid before takeoff. Broader weather impacts were also being tracked in the Upper Midwest and East Coast airspace.

The airport this week unveiled its winter protocol to handle forecasted snowstorms.

At peak operation, about 280 personnel may be assigned to work at one time toward MSP snow removal efforts, including airport employees and contracted help. The airport has received accolades for its effectiveness in removing snow and running in winter weather.

A spokesman for Delta Air Lines, MSP’s dominant airline, said its Minnesota hub operation was running well despite the weather, thanks to its employees and the airport authority.

Minnesota-based Sun Country Airlines, the second-most-traveled at MSP, had no canceled flights at late morning Wednesday. A spokeswoman said the airline proactively delayed some of its departing flights to ease traffic during the storm’s peak. Other delays were tied to operations constrained to a single runway and the time needed to deice planes.

Not all the disruption at MSP was weather-related. Nearly 180 passengers on an inbound Delta flight from Paris were pushed to a later departure after a midair emergency involving the flaps on the airplane forced the pilots to turn around.