Delta Airlines has begun limited flights after a power outage in Atlanta led to a global computer shutdown.
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Delta initially announced it was cancelling about 300 flights Tuesday morning, in statement released at 8:30 a.m. EST.
Without a functioning computer network, Delta grounded all flights for hours Monday, eventually canceling about 1,000 flights across the United States and beyond.
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx’s office said the government was talking to Delta about technical issues surrounding the outage, but gave no specifics.
Customers who have not been contacted can reach out to Customer Care here to receive a voucher.
“Just a couple of weeks ago, Southwest Airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights after a faulty router knocked out part of its systems”. Debbie McGarry left Switzerland on Monday and was still stuck Tuesday at the Atlanta airport, far from her Arizona home.
Delta is offering refunds and $200 in travel vouchers to people whose flights were canceled or delayed at least three hours. The airline was back online after a number of hours Monday, but the outages were so widespread that it is still dealing with the ripple effects a day later.
“We were able to bring our systems back on line and resume flights within a few hours yesterday but we are still operating in recovery mode”, said Dave Holtz, Delta senior vice president, operations and customer center.
The company extended a travel waiver to customers traveling Tuesday.
Delta’s challenge now will be to find enough seats on planes during the busy summer holiday season to accommodate the tens of thousands of passengers whose flights were scrubbed. Last month, the average Delta flight was 87% full.
As of Tuesday, the airline said it was still working to get delayed passengers wherever they needed to be.
As The Two-Way reported Monday, Georgia Power, the utility that serves the Atlanta region where Delta is based, tweeted that “Delta experienced equipment failure overnight”. He said no other customers lost power. Flight-status displays, the website and some mobile and airport technology were disrupted, Delta said. Even brief outages can now snarl traffic and, as the Delta incident shows, those problems can go global in seconds.
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Last year, United Airlines had a computer glitch that affected almost 5,000 flights.
