Delta Air Lines struggled to recover for the fourth straight day. Global technology outages Caused by Faulty software updatesTens of thousands of passengers were stranded and the flight drew unwanted attention from the federal government.
The airline’s chief executive said it will be “a few more days” before “the worst is clearly behind us.” Delta Air Lines’ chief information officer said Monday that the airline is still working on revising its critical crew scheduling program.
Other airlines are seeing service disruptions return to near-normal levels. Delta is relatively weak Responding to power outages that hit airlines, hospitals and businesses around the world.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg talked delta Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian spoke Sunday about the high number of cancellations since Friday. Buttigieg said the airline has received “hundreds of complaints” and expects the airline to provide hotels and meals for delayed travelers and quickly refund customers who don’t want to rebook on a later flight.
“No one should be stuck in an airport overnight or waiting hours to speak to a customer service representative,” said Buttigieg, who pledged to help Delta passengers by enforcing air travel regulations. Consumer Protection Regulation.
“You don’t have to remind me, I know, because we’re doing the best we can to take care of our customers, especially during these tough times,” Bastian said in a video to employees.
Delta has canceled more than 5,500 flights since the outage began early Friday, with at least 700 more canceled on Monday, according to aviation data provider Cirium. Delta and its regional affiliates were responsible for about two-thirds of all canceled flights worldwide on Monday, including nearly all flights within the United States.
United Airlines has been the next worst performer, cancelling around 1,500 flights since the outage began, but as of late Monday morning the airline had only cancelled 17 flights.
Other airlines caught up in the first round of suspensions had largely returned to normal operations by Monday, including American Airlines, Spirit Airlines, Frontier Airlines and Allegiant Air.
Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Officer Bastian said in a message to customers on Sunday that the airline was continuing to work to restore interrupted operations. One of the tools Delta uses to track its flight crew was affected and could not handle the large number of changes caused by the outage.
“The technical issues occurred during one of the busiest summer travel weekends, causing bookings to exceed 90% and limiting rebooking capabilities,” Bastian wrote. Bookings is the percentage of seats sold on each flight.
Airlines have large, layered technology systems, with flight attendant tracking programs often being among the oldest. When the outages began on Friday, airlines reported that systems used to check in passengers and calculate the weight and balance of aircraft before flights were also affected. United and American reported intermittent problems communicating with flight attendants on board, which led to All flights temporarily suspended.
Some airlines, including Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines, Cybersecurity Software The outages were caused by a glitch in an upgrade to Microsoft Windows. These carriers saw relatively few cancellations.
But Delta said “more than half” of its IT systems are Windows-based. The outage required IT workers to manually repair and restart each affected system and get applications in sync to work together, the airline said.
“It will be a few more days before we can say the worst is clearly behind us,” Bastian told employees on Monday. “Today will be better than yesterday, and we expect Tuesday and Wednesday to be even better.”
In the same video, Delta’s chief information officer, Rahul Samant, said two applications were particularly difficult to restart on Friday: one that manages traffic at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Delta’s largest hub, and another that assigns pilots and flight attendants to flights.
Engineers have got a crew-scheduling program up and running but “they still have some catching up to do” and new problems keep cropping up, Samant said.
Delta, based in Atlanta, Offering exemptions This is to make it easier for customers to reschedule their trips.
That was of little help to Jason Hermes, a fitness coach trying to return to his Detroit home from Denver. His flight Sunday was delayed three times before being canceled, and by the time the plane finally pulled back from the gate, the pilot was at the end of his legally allowed shift.
“Everybody was stranded. No information about hotels, no idea what to do next,” Hermes said. “They said, ‘Just go down to baggage claim, your luggage will be there.’ There were thousands of bags there. I found mine. I was lucky.”
Hermes said Delta offered to rebook him on Wednesday, but he worried that flight would be canceled, too. He booked a flight home on Tuesday with Frontier Airlines, one of the airlines that has mostly recovered. He’s saved his receipts, including the hotel, and hopes Delta will reimburse him.
“For the last 10 years, I’ve flown exclusively with Delta,” he said. “This has made me rethink that.”
Delta Airlines meltdown The December 2022 fiasco Southwest Airlines was forced to cancel about 17,000 flights over 15 days, and after a federal investigation into its compliance with consumer protection regulations, the airline agreed to pay a $35 million fine. $140 million settlement With the Ministry of Transport.
Southwest’s outage began during a winter storm, but the airline The recovery took an unusually long time. The problem was caused by a problem with the flight crew scheduling system, which bears a striking resemblance to Delta’s current turmoil.
of Aviation industry Microsoft may be the most visible victim of a global technology problem caused by a glitch in a software update from Texas-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which Microsoft said affected 8.5 million machines. CrowdStrike said it had deployed a fix, but experts said it could take days or weeks to fix. All affected computers.
