Delta Air Lines 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.
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Industry consultants say airlines face an increasing risk from computer disruptions as they automate more of their operations, distribute boarding passes on smartphones and outfit their planes with Wifi.
In July, Southwest Airlines delayed or canceled more than 2,000 flights after an outage hit its computer systems.
The problem brought Delta’s operations to a temporary halt and caused a cascade of cancellations and delays that disrupted travel for hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
Delta Air Lines continued to cancel flights Wednesday morning but said normal flight operations could resume by Wednesday afternoon.
“We are sorry for what many of our customers have experienced over the past 24 hours, including those who remain at airports and continue waiting for their flights”, Delta SVP-operations Dave Holts said.
The Atlanta-based airline canceled close to 700 more flights Tuesday on top of 1,000 Monday, leaving passengers frustrated, exhausted and fed up at Hartsfield-Jackson International and other airports across the globe.
Ed Bastian, who took over as CEO in May, spoke with the Associated Press about the system meltdown Wednesday, the airline’s spending on new technology and plans to keep passengers loyal to Delta.
Delta previously said it expected fewer than 100 flights to be Wednesday, but that estimate ultimately proved too conservative.
Delta Airlines, which owns a majority stake in Virgin Atlantic, operates as many as 54,000 flights every day.
Delta canceled 775 flights Tuesday and 1,000 on Monday. The network is supposed to instantly switch over to backup computer systems.
As a bonus, Delta is giving away $200 in travel vouchers to those whose flight was canceled or delayed more than three hours.
Mergers create many chances for things to go wrong, as airlines that may have incompatible software combine their systems.
A spokesman for the local electric company, Georgia Power, said the problem started with a piece of Delta equipment called a switchgear, which direct flows within a power system. About 800 flights were scrubbed on Tuesday and 1,000 on Monday.
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When other servers that were connected to dual power sources came back on, he said, “they did not get responses from the 300 servers…”
