It was a rough day for Delta Air Lines passengers as more than 740 flights were canceled and 2,400 flights delayed after a power outage in Atlanta caused the airline’s computer system to go out worldwide.
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“Unfortunately, we seem to have seen more of these throughout the industry obviously everything is run by computers today so if there is a glitch somewhere in the system, it can cause a lot of issues with being able to get the aircraft in and out of the various hubs and connecting those aircrafts on to their next flight destination”, Torp said.
A power outage in Atlanta around 2:30 a.m. ET was responsible for the problem, the company said in a statement. The computers are now back online, but the airline is still scrambling system-wide to relieve the flight backlog.
At 7:25 a.m., that page showed 19 delays and four cancellations – flights to Detroit, London and Paris – among dozens of Delta flights scheduled to depart Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Monday.
The Eastern Iowa Airport wasn’t immune to Monday’s Delta delays.
It also said there would be “some lag time in the display of accurate flight status at delta.com, the Fly Delta App and from Delta representatives on the phone and in airport”.
As of 3:40 p.m. ET, Delta said it had canceled more than 650 flights and had operated about 2,340 of the almost 6,000 scheduled for Monday.
One traveler headed to Kentucky told Local 22 & Local 44, he got a heads up about the delay, “We got a text from one of our co-workers this morning telling us there were some delta issues”.
The crisis is over, but Delta Airlines is still trying to deal with a computer system failure that affected Delta flights throughout the the world.
Delta spokesman Eric O’Brien said he had no information on the report, but that Delta is investigating.
At LaGuardia, Lars Heger, 52, of London, and his family were headed to Nashville, Tennessee, on the next leg of their US vacation. Southwest said it canceled 2,300 flights between July 20 and 24, about 12 percent of its schedule, and FlightStats Inc. said more than 8,000 flights were delayed.
Until Monday, Delta had been considered among the leaders in operations and was thought to be immune to big IT problems. “I travel weekly, so I’m used to it”, Shannon said with a laugh.
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Early confirmation of the troubles first came in an official account that responds to customers via Twitter. The company offered refunds to travelers whose flights were canceled or significantly delayed, and waived fees for customers making changes to their tickets. Travelers on some routes can also make a one-time change to the ticket free of charge.
