Delta Air Lines is struggling to recover from technical glitches for the fourth day in a row, while other airlines are nearing normal service levels
Delta Air Lines struggled for the fourth day in a row to recover from a global technical outage caused by a faulty software update, stranding tens of thousands of passengers and drawing unwanted attention from the federal government.
Other airlines returned to near-normal levels of service disruptions on Monday, drawing attention to Delta’s relatively weak response to the outage that has hit airlines, hospitals and businesses around the world.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke with Delta CEO Ed Bastian on Sunday about the airline’s high number of cancellations since Friday. Buttigieg said his agency has received “hundreds of complaints” about Delta and he expects the airline to provide hotels and meals to delayed travelers and quickly issue refunds to customers who don’t want to be rebooked on a later flight.
“No one should be stranded in an airport overnight or wait on hold for hours to speak to a customer service representative,” Buttigieg said. He pledged to help Delta passengers by enforcing consumer protection rules for air travel.
Delta has canceled more than 5,500 flights since the outage began Friday morning, including at least 700 flights canceled Monday, according to airline data provider Cirium. Delta and its regional affiliates accounted for about two-thirds of all cancellations worldwide on Monday, including nearly all in the United States.
United Airlines was the second-worst performer since the outage began, with nearly 1,500 flights canceled. However, United had canceled only 17 flights by late Monday morning.
Other airlines caught in the first round of groundings also largely returned to normal operations Monday. They included American Airlines, Spirit Airlines, Frontier Airlines and Allegiant Air.
Delta CEO Bastian said in a message to customers Sunday that the airline was continuing to restore operations that had been disrupted. One of the tools Delta uses to track crews was affected and could not handle the high volume of changes caused by the outage.
“The technology issue occurred on the busiest travel weekend of the summer, with our booked loads exceeding 90%, limiting our reaccommodation options,” Bastian wrote. Loads are the percentage of seats sold on each flight.
Airlines have large, multi-layered technology systems, and crew-tracking programs are often among the oldest. When the outage began Friday, it also affected systems used to check in passengers, schedule crews and perform pre-flight calculations about plane weight and balance, airlines said. United and American reported intermittent problems communicating with crews in the air, which contributed to their decision to briefly ground all flights.
Some airlines, including Southwest and Alaska, do not use CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity software vendor whose faulty Microsoft Windows upgrade caused the outages. Those airlines saw relatively few cancellations. Aviation experts said it’s likely Delta has more systems running Microsoft Windows than other airlines.
“The impact of the CrowdStrike IT outage will last for days and will linger in the minds of travelers with canceled vacations for longer,” John Grant, senior analyst at travel data provider OAG, said in a blog post. “Such events highlight the challenges of an industry that relies on external IT systems that can, and likely will, fail again in the future.”
Atlanta-based Delta is offering waivers to make it easier for customers to reschedule their travel.
Delta’s meltdown echoes the December 2022 debacle that forced Southwest Airlines to cancel nearly 17,000 flights in a 15-day period. After a federal investigation into Southwest’s compliance with consumer protection rules, the airline agreed to pay a $35 million fine as part of a $140 million settlement with the Department of Transportation.
The airline industry is perhaps the most visible victim of the global technical problems caused by the faulty software update from Texas-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. Microsoft said the outage affected 8.5 million machines. CrowdStrike says it has implemented a fix, but experts say it could take days or even weeks to repair every affected computer.