Inside a Notre Dame law professor's 24-hour travel day from hell: blocked from leaving the airport, no WiFi to rebook a flight, and no access to her medication

• A Notre Dame law professor found herself stuck in airports in Manila and Seoul on New Year's Day.
• Around 56,000 passengers were affected by the mass shutdown of flights in Manila on Sunday.

For one Notre Dame law professor, 2023 opened with a 24-hour travel nightmare.

It all started in the Philippines, where she'd flown to visit her family for the holidays.

Diane Desierto was set to return to the US on Sunday, having booked a trip from Manila to Washington D.C. Her first connecting flight was from Manila to Seoul.

On Sunday morning, she arrived at Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport and checked in, she told Insider.

But from there everything started to unravel, with a power outage forcing authorities to close the country's airspace. 56,000 passengers were affected, across 280 flights.

"There was mass mayhem, because all the other flights were canceled or stranded. The free WiFi cuts off after three hours so nobody knew what was going on," she said, adding that you couldn't you make a call unless you had a local number.

As the delay dragged on, she looked for a Delta ticketing agent to help her rebook her connecting flight from Seoul to Washington D.C., but couldn't find anyone. And with limited internet and call options, Desierto had no way of getting in touch with Delta's customer service.

She considered leaving the airport to find a WiFi connection, but said the staff wouldn't release her or her luggage.

"That was my point of contention with the ground staff," Desierto said. "They were insistent that we were not allowed to leave the airport. I tried to leave and got stopped because I didn't have the right immigration stamps or the authorization to leave the airport itself."

Instead, airport and Korean Air staff told Desierto to board her flight to Seoul when operations resumed, even though she'd already missed her connecting flight to the US.

Staff told her she could find a Delta ticketing agent once she landed, she said.

With no other option, Desierto got on the plane, almost eight hours late.

However, when Desierto and other Delta passengers arrived in Seoul the promised ticketing agent was nowhere to be found.

She tried approaching Korean Air staff to rebook her flight, but said they identified her as a Delta customer and told her to contact Delta instead.

It was 10 p.m. Seoul time, and with the airport's eateries and shops closed, Desierto and her fellow passengers found themselves with no food, nowhere to sleep, and no way out of Seoul.

Stranded in Incheon

Many of those stranded with Desierto were Delta customers trying to return to the US too — Minneapolis, Seattle, Chicago, or Detroit, she said. The law professor, who flew Business Class, said her cabin was full of Americans who'd missed their flights out of Seoul.

"Everybody was left to fend for themselves. Many families with children were on the same flight, infants and young children who were all forced to sleep at the airport," she said.

For Desierto there was an added sense of urgency — she needed access to her medication, some of which was packed in her check-in luggage.

Desierto finally made contact with a Delta representative at 1 a.m., more than 12 hours after her first flight was initially delayed in Manila.

After two hours of back and forth with Delta and Korean Air, she found a new flight for the next afternoon to the US, though her destination was now Seattle instead of Washington D.C.

"That was one bright spot. When I finally connected with Delta, they never cut the line and stayed on with me," she said.

Other passengers were still desperately calling Delta when she woke up the next morning, she said.

On Monday, Desierto boarded her flight to Seattle, 26 hours after her plane from Manila was first delayed.

She'd already missed several meetings in Washington D.C., and told Insider she instead planned to travel straight back to South Bend, where the University of Notre Dame campus is located.

Desierto hasn't decide yet if she'll raise a formal complaint regarding her ordeal.

"I'll go home first and deliberate," she said. "Because I'm also a lawyer, and I work with a lot of lawyers, I will examine what the appropriate resolution mechanism is."

"56,000 passengers were affected," she added. "And you're gonna have hundreds, if not thousands of people, who were forced to spend New Year's Day without food or water, under a lot of uncertainty and under a lot of stress."

Korean Air and Ninoy Aquino International Airport did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

Delta, in response to Insider's queries on Desierto's flight situation, said it invited the law professor to contact the airline directly to "hear more" about her experience.

"Delta would not instruct any representative to have a customer refrain from leaving an airport contrary to their will," a Delta spokesperson said in a statement.