The cancellations Tuesday follow about 1,000 cancelled flights Monday and nearly 3,000 delayed flights after an outage at its Atlanta headquarters initiated a global meltdown of its booking and communications systems. About 800 flights were scrubbed on Tuesday and 1,000 on Monday.
Advertisement
Q: What do you say to fliers who are hesitant to book new flights on Delta? Customers experiencing a delay of more than three hours, or a canceled flight, could receive $200 in vouchers for future travel.
The problems started early Monday when a critical piece of equipment failed at the airline’s headquarters, according to a statement by Chief Operating Officer Gil West.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian apologized to customers in a video, saying that the airline’s employees are “working around the clock” to restore normal operations.
At about 7p.m, Delta as canceled up to 740 flight, after which it computer systems had begun functioning.
Even if a computer outage hadn’t affected Delta’s entire operation, passengers would still be entitled to the forms of compensation spelled out in the conditions of carriage.
Delta passengers stand in line as the carrier slogged through day two of its recovery from a global computer outage Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016, in Salt Lake City.
Image: Delta personnel assisting travelers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
That has afflicted airlines in the USA and overseas.
The cost of lost revenue, accommodating passengers on other flights and other issues may cut the airline’s third-quarter earnings by as much as 10 percent, Dan McKenzie, an analyst at Buckingham Research Group, said in a note Tuesday.
Delta Air Lines is spending $150 million this year on technology upgrades, including a better mobile app.
On Monday in Richmond, Virginia, Delta gate agents were writing out boarding passes by hand.
“You’ve got these big systems and maintaining them is kind of like maintaining an aircraft in flight because they can’t go down”, Peri said. Others took it in stride.
Ryan Shannon, another passenger on the Lexington-to-New York flight, said passengers boarded, were asked to exit, waited about 90 minutes and then got back on the plane.
Once Delta cleared flights to take off, “we boarded and didn’t have any problems”.
Advertisement
“I don’t believe the flight ops, maintenance, passenger service systems, crew and dispatch applications are engineered with the level of redundancy needed”, Edwards, who retired in 2014 under pressure after several service disruptions at United, said by telephone.
