Hundreds face more delays on Delta flights after Monday’s massive outage

Delta said it would provide 0 vouchers to all customers who had a flight canceled or experienced a delay of more than three hours. “We’ve got Delta teams working around the clock to restore our system capability”, Bastian said. Last month, the average Delta flight was 87 per cent full.

Delta Air Lines passengers around the country are still feeling the effects of nationwide delays after its operations came to a halt following a power outage early Monday morning.

At least nine flights scheduled to depart from Louisville International Airport on Monday were delayed.

“Consistently poor on-time performance would likely cost airlines customers, so airlines value on-time performance as a competitive matter”, the spokesperson said. “Then today, I got up at about 3:30 a.m., and saw that my flight was cancelled, so I got here at 6:00, and now I’m still waiting in line”, he said.

Though rumors of hacking have so far been debunked, the airline and Georgia Power are still unsure as to why the airline’s backup-power systems didn’t engage after the initial outage. However, the utility company delivering the power to Delta is disputing the airline’s explanation.

“The airline is forcing consumers to dance to Delta’s tune instead of making passengers whole”, says Mr. Leocha, who criticizes the tight constraints Delta is placing on passengers for booking and changing flights.

As the Journal pointed out, the fiasco highlights the vulnerability of Delta’s computer systems, which run “everything from flight dispatching to crew scheduling, passenger check-in, airport-departure information displays, ticket sales and frequent-flier programs”. Even brief outages can snarl traffic and cause long delays. The global system shutdown comes a month after Southwest Airlines experienced its own computer failure that caused it to ground 2,000 flights.

That has afflicted airlines in the U.S. and overseas.

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Delta’s challenge Tuesday was to find enough seats on planes during the busy summer vacation season to accommodate the tens of thousands of passengers whose flights were scrubbed. In Tokyo, a dot-matrix printer was resurrected to keep track of passengers on a flight to Shanghai. “I travel weekly, so I’m used to it”, Shannon said with a laugh.