The airline had 23 days without any cancellations in the system of almost 6,000 daily flights, he said.
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The airline canceled roughly 1,000 flights on Monday after a power outage caused a complete system outage. The problem has not affected other Georgia Power customers, he said.
Delta resumed a limited number of departures Monday morning but warned passengers to expect cancellations and delays.
According to website Flightradar24, some of the first flights to take off were from Amsterdam to the United States, while a flight from Phoenix to Atlanta was among the first to depart from a US airport.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian apologized to customers Monday afternoon via a video posted to the carrier’s website.
Passengers may opt for a full refund of their ticket price if their flight was delayed or canceled, Delta said. The company’s shares closed down 0.6 percent on Monday, reported The Financial Times. Delta says rebooked travel must be for flights no later than Friday.
Delta is cancelling almost 250 flights Tuesday morning as it works to reset the operation and get crews, aircraft and other operational elements in place to take care of customers.
Delta has a reputation in the industry for its punctuality, which should help it withstand the blow to its reputation, said David Primo, an associate professor of political science and business administration at the University of Rochester and author of a book on aviation regulations.
For passengers, hardship from the Monday morning meltdown was compounded by the fact that Delta’s flight-status updates weren’t working either.
The worst-hit airports were Delta’s primary hubs in Atlanta, New York and Minneapolis. It was later spun off into a separate company called Travelport, but Delta bought back its portion two years ago.
Airlines depend on huge, overlapping and complicated systems to operate flights, ticketing, boarding, airport kiosks, websites and mobile phone apps.
“We believe that Delta experienced an equipment failure overnight that caused a power outage, ” Craig Bell, a spokesman for Georgia Power, told USA TODAY.
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Six flights were canceled, affecting 1,733 travelers, Okada said. At about 9:30 a.m. CDT, it said about 800 of its almost 6,000 scheduled flights had taken off.
