Delta Air Lines passengers stranded after computer crash grounds flights

A travel waiver has been issued for customers.

In a memo notifying customers they can receive a refund on canceled or significantly delayed flights, the airline also said, “We are aware that flight status systems, including airport screens, are incorrectly showing flights on time”. The company said on Twitter that it was investigating the source of the outage.

The power outage, which began at about 2.30 am ET, impacted Delta computer systems and operations worldwide, and resulted in flight delays.

According to the company, it experienced a computer outage in Atlanta that has impacted flights scheduled for Monday morning, while its flights awaiting departure are now delayed. Thousands of travelers were stranded and flights were canceled. “And customers should check the status of their flight before heading to the airport while the issue is being addressed”, one message string read.

At noon inside New York’s LaGuardia Airport, Francesca Villardi still had no idea when her 11:50 a.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, would depart. Flights which were already en route were operating normally, but many passengers took to Twitter to express frustration with being stuck on the ground.

Delta said its IT systems were down “everywhere” and “hopefully it won’t be much longer”. Several applications were affected, including the company’s website.

Delta has about 120 flights in and out of the airport per day. The cause of the network failure was not made clear, as the airline did not respond to a request for information.

Delta’s problems come less than three weeks after Southwest Airlines canceled more than 1,000 flights following a system outage. In Tokyo, a dot-matrix printer was resurrected to keep track of passengers on a flight to Shanghai.

The U.S. airline said the problems were down to a power outage in Atlanta overnight and that its information technology team was working to resolve the problem.

Bodeen said that passengers have been taking the matter in stride.

“I’m not ready to go into camping mode yet, but other passengers are”, she said, tweeting a photo of sleeping passengers.