The airline has had to cancel over 1,700 flights since Monday, when a power outage at its base in Atlanta affected its global computer systems. While the power loss was brief, the various systems needed to fluidly operate the airline’s global network have struggled to return to full speed or functionality, wrote Gil West, Delta’s chief operating officer, in a blog post.
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“We’re in the final hours of bouncing back from the disruption”, Bill Lentsch, Delta’s senior vice president for airport customer service and airline operations, said in an online posting. Delta operates almost 6,000 flights a day this time of year.
Delta’s technological snag has been resolved but cancellations and delays continued into Wednesday as the airline struggled to reset its worldwide flight schedules and get thousands of employees back into their regular rotations, according to officials.
The travel havoc at one of the world’s largest carriers has brought into focus the vulnerability of airlines’ technology infrastructure. Experts say mergers – and sometimes insufficient investment in back-end technology – have left airlines with a hodgepodge of systems.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian, in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said he takes “personal responsibility” for the episode and added new detail to its cause. Automated operations means any single glitch can affect wide swaths of a company’s operations.
Delta said problems arose when critical systems did not switch over to a backup source following a power surge and outage on Monday.
“We haven’t been affected here because Skywest handles all the flights from Cody to Salt Lake”, YRA manager Bob Hooper said. “We’ll do everything that we can to make certain this does not happen again”, Bastian said in the video.
Shares were down 1.3 percent at $36.47 in late afternoon trading.
Delta issued a statement apologizing to customers and said teams were working to fix the problem as quickly as possible. On Tuesday, Delta canceled another 775 flights and announced further delays.
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Leocha said Delta should let passengers rebook their travel at no extra cost for up to a year as compensation for lost vacation time, missed weddings or other inconveniences. Delta said it gave hotel vouchers to several thousand customers, including more than 2,000 on Monday night in Atlanta.
