The chaos and heartbreak continued for people, particularly Delta passengers, at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Tuesday after days of desperately trying to get on a plane.

“I ended up randomly driving from Los Angeles to Minneapolis in a rental car with two random people I just met just to get here, because there were no flights out for like a week,” remarked Erin Barry as she searched for her luggage, she hoped was buried among a sea of suitcases at the Delta baggage claim in the morning.

“Still don’t have my bag,” she said. “Don’t know where it is.”

“I’ve been through hell,” said another Delta passenger, Sarah Shafer.

She was supposed to celebrate her cousin’s 50th birthday in Tampa, Florida, over the weekend. Her original flight was scheduled for Friday. After two cancellations, she was hoping the third booked flight on Delta would be the charm. Although it was delayed nearly an hour as of Tuesday morning.

“I told my cousin, ‘If it cancels today, I’m just — I’m done. I’m just done flying forever,'” Shafer said.

Nathan Dornquast finally found his luggage after days of effort on Tuesday morning, using an Apple AirTag. He said he hasn’t had success in getting a hold of customer service on the phone, and he said it’s not for a lack of trying.

“That’s the frustrating part is I just can’t get a hold of a person,” Dornquast said. “Three hours before I gave up last night.”

Delta’s reticketing assistance line was noticeably less congested on Tuesday compared to days prior, but the cancellations and delays continued to pile up.

Thrifty Traveler Executive Editor Kyle Potter said the airline has canceled more flights in the last few days following the global IT outage than it did in all of 2018 and 2019 combined.

“Delta is still melting down and no other airline in the country is, so is this a CrowdStrike problem or a Delta problem?” Potter commented.

The U.S. Department of Transportation launched an investigation on Tuesday morning into Delta’s consumer response.

“My understanding is that this investigation is really going to be focused on how Delta is responding to consumers,” Potter explained. “Is Delta making good on the promises it’s made to reimburse for a hotel or additional meals, and people, many of whom have rented a car instead of trying to fly and driving 12-plus hours across the country.”

Potter emphasized passengers have the right to reimbursement for those unforeseen expenses and to a full refund for canceled or significantly delayed flights.

“Not just a credit, not just an airline voucher, but getting your money back,” he continued, adding that it’s important to ask for it if the airline doesn’t offer it upfront.

As to why Delta, the airline hailed as the most reliable in recent years, has been seemingly the slowest to recover, Potter said, “I think, you know, the initial response that every airline made in canceling flights because their computer systems wouldn’t work, and rescheduling other flights just overwhelmed some of Delta’s other IT systems to the point that they also broke. I think that’s what we’re looking at here.”

“It’ll be awhile before we can fully understand what went wrong here,” Potter added. “I hope and trust that Delta’s looking at that already — not just trying to recover and get people where they need to go but ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

Passengers are urged to get and hold on to receipts and invoices related to any unforeseen expenses, like meals, hotels and rental cars. Those will be necessary for reimbursement.