U.S. airline Delta has cancelled at least 300 more flights after a power outage on Monday that resulted in the cancellation of 1,000 flights and delays for about 2,800 more. By mid-day Tuesday, almost 400 Delta flights had been scrubbed and another 700 delayed.
Advertisement
The latest disruptions follow about 1,000 cancellations and 2,800 delayed flights on Monday after a power outage at Delta’s Atlanta headquarters tripped a meltdown of its booking, communications and other systems.
“As I’m sure you can appreciate, it’s a all hands on deck effort”, American CEO Ed Bastian said on the airline’s website.
Delta said it was extending its offer of a refund to passengers traveling Tuesday and was also offering a $200 voucher to passengers whose flights were canceled or who were delayed for more than three hours.
The airline’s travel waiver has been extended to customers traveling Tuesday.
On Monday, 66 Delta flights were canceled and 102 were delayed, FlightAware’s website shows. The investigation of the outage is ongoing, but Banstetter said that there is no indication that the problems were caused by a hack or intentional breach of the system. A spokesperson for the power company told the AP to lay the blame on Delta’s equipment, as no one else in the area experienced an outage. He said other Georgia Power customers were not affected because it was an issue with Delta equipment. Eastern after it grounded 1,000 flights on Monday.
This has caused a lot of problems for travelers using Delta, the third-largest in the world by the number of passengers (138.8 million travelers last year).
The largest USA airlines – which account for about 85 percent of domestic air traffic – are required to report on-time performance for each flight to the government each month, and to disclose that information on their websites and to travel agencies. Delta preemptively canceled 300 flights early Tuesday as the company “work [ed] to reset the operation” and schedule and transport crews, aircraft and airport personnel to problem locations throughout Delta’s system. United Airlines suffered a series of massive IT meltdowns after combining its technology systems with those of merger partner Continental Airlines. The carrier didn’t estimate how long repairs would take. Others took it in stride.
As of Tuesday, the airline said it was still working to get delayed passengers wherever they needed to be.
Advertisement
“There is always a delay, or weather, or something”, he said. “Now I’m standing in lines all day I guess”, he said.
