Hayes, however, said that Delta’s merger with Northwest Airlines, finalized in 2010, did not result in a hybrid system. The ripple effect from such a large disruption can take several days to full shake out of an airline’s entire schedule, and reports coming in Tuesday suggested Delta customers still faced a ragged operation by the airline.
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By late morning, almost 400 Delta flights had been scrubbed and more than 700 delayed, according to tracking service FlightStats Inc. Customers who gave their email addresses to Delta will receive the voucher in about a week, says the airline.
Delta Air Lines Inc said it was canceling more than 500 flights worldwide on Tuesday as the carrier worked to restore operations after a power outage hit its computer systems on Monday.
According to The New York Times, the outage occurred when a failed piece of electrical equipment at a facility in Atlanta triggered a shut down of airline’s computer system that manages booking, baggage and airplane communications.
“We were able to bring our systems back on line and resume flights within a few hours [Monday] but we are still operating in recovery mode”, Dave Holtz, senior vice president of Delta’s operations and customer center, said in a statement. The delays and cancellations prompted an apology from Delta’s CEO Ed Baston who said, “It’s an all hands on deck effort”.
The airline is waiving fees, offering refunds and giving out travel vouchers to those who were scheduled to fly on August 8 or August 9.
Its main challenge will be to find sufficient seats on planes during the busy summer holiday season for tens of thousands of passengers whose flights were cancelled.
For those flying on Delta, you can check the status of your flight here.
“We found out we’re four hours delayed”, said Delta passenger Shanese Sims.
Airlines depend on huge, overlapping and complicated systems to operate flights, ticketing, boarding, airport kiosks, websites and mobile phone apps. Even brief outages can now snarl traffic and, as the Delta incident shows, those problems can go global in seconds.
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Last year, United Airlines had a computer glitch that affected almost 5,000 flights. Experts say travelers should expect delays into Wednesday. United Airlines and American Airlines both suffered outages previous year – United has struggled with several meltdowns since combining technology systems with merger partner Continental Airlines.
