A computer system meltdown at Delta Air Lines’ Atlanta hub forced hundreds of flight cancellations Monday and put a spotlight on how quickly airline technology failures can cascade into a crisis that disrupts travel across the nation.
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By early afternoon, more than 500 of today’s Delta flights had been scrubbed, and almost 1,200 were delayed – according to the tracking service FlightStats.
Nationally, the airline canceled almost 250 flights Tuesday and about 1,000 on Monday.
As Delta enters the second day of widespread flight cancellations and delays globally, the company is taking measures to make things right with consumers by offering some compensation for thousands of flight delays and cancellations.
Delta also extended its travel waiver for customers traveling on August 9.
On Monday evening, Delta’s chief executive Ed Bastian, issued a video apology to passengers.
Monday’s Delta outage disabled their flight status alerts.
Delta Airlines Inc. ranks as the third-largest in the world by number of passengers carried, with 138.8 million travellers previous year, according to industry group IATA.
Instead of being able to stay home, many passengers only learned about the flight problems when they arrived at the airport.
Delta Air Lines experienced a worldwide computer outage affecting flights on all its routes, according to Rolenda Faasuamalie, spokeswoman for the A.B. Won Pat International Airport Authority.
Georgia Power spokesman John Kraft said a failure overnight of Delta’s switch gear equipment caused the outage. Delta says it’s still operating in recovery mode after Monday’s major computer outage. No other customers lost power, a spokesman said. Even brief outages can snarl traffic and cause long delays.
It is the second major outage to hit a United States airline in the past month after a faulty router at Southwest Airlines caused flight disruptions lasting almost a week. Agents at many airports were using pen and paper to create boarding passes.
Faasuamalie said at most 155 passengers were affected on each flight.
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“It’s a fair criticism”, says Kaplan, managing partner of Airline Weekly, an independent publication that follows the industry. There is always a delay, or weather, or something.
