Delta Air Lines\u00a0CEO Ed Bastian apologized and offered frequent flyer miles to travelers for thousands of flight cancellations as the carrier struggled to recover from\u00a0Friday\u2019s globe-spanning IT outage, disruptions that sparked criticism from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.<\/p>\n
The Atlanta-based airline canceled more than 4,600 flights from Friday through Sunday, more than any other airline, according to aviation data firm OAG.<\/p>\n
On Monday morning, Delta had already canceled another 700 flights, or 18% of its mainline operation, making up the vast majority of cancellations in the U.S.<\/p>\n
The delays and cancellations have put Delta in\u00a0a rare spotlight for the carrier\u00a0whose leaders pride themselves on reliability and punctuality.<\/p>\n
Travelers wait in line at check-in in Terminal 2, Delta Airlines, at Los Angeles airport, on July 19, 2024.<\/span>Etienne Laurent \/ AFP \u2013 Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe continue to receive reports of unacceptable disruptions and customer service conditions at Delta Air Lines, including hundreds of complaints filed with our Department,\u201d Buttigieg said in an emailed statement late Sunday. \u201cI have made clear to Delta that we expect the airline to provide prompt refunds\u201d to customers who chose to call off their trips because of the disruptions as well as \u201ctimely reimbursements for food and overnight hotel stays to consumers affected by the delays and cancellations, as well as adequate customer service assistance to all of their passengers.\u201d<\/p>\n The disruptions have persisted at Delta while most other carriers have recovered.\u00a0American Airlines\u00a0said it was almost back to normal by Saturday.\u00a0United Airlines\u00a0had elevated flight disruptions on Sunday with 9% of its schedule canceled, or 260 flights, according to FlightAware, but still below Delta\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to apologize to every one of you who have been impacted by these events,\u201d Bastian said in a message to customers. \u201cDelta is in the business of connecting the world, and we understand how difficult it can be when your travels are disrupted.\u201d<\/p>\n The airline was offering flight attendants extra pay to pick up shifts, a staff memo on Sunday said. The carrier called some of them on their personal phones to come in, according to a person familiar with the matter. High demand during some one of the busiest periods of summer challenged the airline to find alternative flights for affected travelers, Bastian said in his note.<\/p>\n Delta Air Lines has a number of\u00a0Microsoft\u00a0tools that were impacted in the outage, \u201cin particular one of our crew tracking-related tools was affected and unable to\u00a0effectively process the unprecedented number of changes triggered by the system shutdown,\u201d Bastian said in his note.<\/p>\n That would make the event similar to an issue\u00a0Southwest Airlines\u00a0suffered, on a\u00a0much greater scale, at the end of 2022 when it\u00a0failed to recover\u00a0from severe winter weather for days.<\/p>\n A botched software update from cybersecurity firm\u00a0CrowdStrike\u00a0that paralyzed some Windows-based programs also hit the banking and health-care industries.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Delta Air Lines\u00a0CEO Ed Bastian apologized and offered frequent flyer miles to travelers for thousands of flight cancellations as the carrier struggled to recover from\u00a0Friday\u2019s globe-spanning IT outage, disruptions that sparked criticism from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The Atlanta-based airline canceled more than 4,600 flights from Friday through Sunday, more than any other airline, according […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}