Delta Air Lines, again anticipating canceled flights and delays in a domino effect from its Monday global systems outage, extended to Thursday its offer of free reticketing for travelers already booked to fly on the world’s second-largest air carrier, even if their flight isn’t canceled or delayed. Most of Wednesday’s delays and cancellations are the result of flight crews being displaced or running up against maximum allowed work hours, it said.
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The recovery might, however, be delayed by scattered thunderstorms forecast in the eastern United States, Delta officials warned.
The airline advised people travelling Wednesday to check the status of their flights. Delta had to cancel 278 more flights (although 1,950 had departed) according to a statement on their website. Delta also said it was extending its waiver of flight change fees through Tuesday and was offering $200 in travel vouchers, in addition to rescheduled flights, to inconvenienced customers.
Delta said it canceled 775 flights nationally on Tuesday after about 1,000 cancellations on Monday. Thousands more flights were delayed and many passengers were left stranded.
“Other systems did. And now we’re seeing instability in these systems”, said Gil West, Delta’s senior executive vice president and chief operating officer. Some critical systems did not automatically switch to backup power as planned, West said, after the main power supply switched off. And it has ended up with aircraft and crews out of position to cover all the scheduled flights, which is why there are continued cancellations almost three days after the initial problem.
Delta said the company is now focusing on “promptly moving departures at the airline’s Atlanta hub, the world’s busiest”.
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx’s office said the government was talking to Delta about technical issues surrounding the outage, but gave no specifics.
Many reports questioned whether Delta and other airlines have let their technology grow old and vulnerable.
The outage affected check-in systems, airport screens and the airline website and smartphone apps.
The airlines announced that it canceled a total of 317 flights as of 4:30 p.m. ET (2030GMT), bringing the tally to more than 2,000 flights since early Monday morning.
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EU Regulation was put in place to protect passengers who have been delayed for three hours or more on a flight coming into or out of Europe and if the delay is not due to “extraordinary circumstances”.
