According to Delta, at around 2:30 a.m. Monday morning, a power outage in Atlanta knocked out their computer system, affecting flights worldwide.
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As compensation for the inconvenience, Delta offered refunds to travelers whose flights are cancelled or significantly delayed.
The outage completely crippled the airline, with large-scale cancellations and delays as well as disruption to airport screens and bookings, as well as snarling the airline’s efforts to alert passengers to the problems via its apps and on airline flight-information displays.
Delta said nearly 1,700 of its scheduled 6,000 flights had operated by mid-afternoon.
“The timing of this problem is particularly bad because Monday morning is one of the busiest times for both airlines and travelers as business travelers begin their work week”, said Daniel Baker, FlightAware’s CEO.
In its update late Monday afternoon, Delta said that after the power outage “some critical systems and network equipment didn’t switch over to Delta’s backup systems”, adding that “investigation into the causes is ongoing”.
When Delta’s system crashed, flights continued that were en route, but flights on the ground remained there.
Word of the extensive breakdown began to spread after the airline used a Twitter account to notify customers that its IT systems were down “everywhere”.
“I have had zero communications from Delta”, said John Chapmanme, while waiting in Atlanta for a flight to Milwaukee for an energy conference.
“By the time I showed up at the gate the employees were already disgruntled, and it was really hard to get anybody to speak to me or get any information”, said Ashley Roache, whose flight from Lexington, Kentucky, to New York’s LaGuardia Airport was delayed.
A lot of passengers across the globe gave Delta a typed tongue lashing on social media.
These systems are also being worked harder, with new fees and options for passengers, and more transactions – Delta’s traffic has almost doubled in the past decade.
The Flightradar24 website showed a flight from Phoenix to Atlanta had taken off, while three planes had departed from Amsterdam to USA destinations.
“While systems are improving and flights are resuming, delays and cancellations continue”, the carrier said in a statement around midday.
Some passengers said they were shocked that computer glitches could cause such turmoil.
Kaplan said all airlines have some old components in their IT systems, including Delta. More than 1,000 people spent the night at the Narita airport because of a computer shutdown that halted Delta Air Lines flights worldwide.
A day after the outage, this is what we know.
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It is unclear exactly what went wrong at Delta. “It’s just a mess”, she said as she stood in a long queue at Delta’s check-in counter. Even if your flight is not cancelled, you may make a one-time change to your ticket without fee.
