Most importantly, consumers should read the fine print, and make certain they get what they are entitled to.
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Q: You and other Delta executives have touted the airline’s record of days without cancelations.
Amid the turmoil, Delta said it would provide $200 in travel vouchers to customers whose flights had either been cancelled or experienced delays of more than three hours, and offered to extend the deal into Wednesday.
Q: You posted an apology video Tuesday saying this isn’t Delta and the quality of service that passengers expect.
“I would always advise going for cash compensation rather than a voucher that comes with small print like an expiry date”, said Kevin Clarke, flight delay lawyer, Bott & Co. “We apologize to everyone who has been affected by these events, and we thank them for their patience”, said Dave Holtz, a senior vice president at Delta. When this happened, critical systems and network equipment failed to switch over to backups.
“We did have a redundant backup power source in place, but unfortunately some of our core systems and key systems did not kick over to the backup power source when we lost power, and as a outcome of that, it caused our entire system effectively to crash”. Delta said among the more than 3,000 flights that did depart Wednesday, about two-thirds left within a half hour of their scheduled departure time. However, connecting flights to the rest of the country from Salt Lake can go through Delta.
“They have a number of options”, said Ashton Morrow, a Delta spokeswoman. But it was still affected by displaced flight crews and crews that were bumping up against their maximum allowable time on duty.
A computer outage Monday morning grounded planes around the world. Radixx’s data center has backup power provided by three jet engines, Peri said.
Customers traveling on Tuesday should check the status of their flight at delta.com or the Fly Delta App, the company said. The airline said it had provided several thousand passengers with hotel rooms, including more than 2,300 Tuesday night alone.
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A similar computer error at Southwest Airlines forced the budget carrier to cancel around 2,000 flights in July. The carrier also fell victim to a reservations-system glitch in October. United Airlines and American Airlines both suffered outages previous year – United has struggled with several meltdowns since combining technology systems with merger partner Continental Airlines.
