Three days after planes around the world were grounded by a technological failure, Delta Air Lines was struggling to get stranded passengers to their destinations Monday and was the only carrier still canceling hundreds of flights as it worked to update its passenger handling system. systems.
The company’s performance was far worse than that of other major U.S. carriers such as American Airlines and United Airlines, which operated with few cancellations, and appears to be the result of decisions made when its systems first failed, analysts said.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Sunday pointed to Delta’s slow recovery and said his office has received numerous complaints about Delta’s customer service. He warned that the airline must provide its customers with adequate assistance and refunds. Delta canceled about 1,300 flights on Sunday, about the same number as the previous two days, and delayed another 1,600, according to the flight-tracking site FlightAware. Those cancellations represent about a third of the airline’s scheduled flights.
Delta’s flight cancellations on Monday (8:15 p.m. ET) accounted for about 21% of scheduled departures, according to FlightAware. Thirty-four percent of flights were delayed.
Friday’s technical outage hit airlines particularly hard. A faulty update to CrowdStrike, whose software is used worldwide, forced Delta, Allegiant Air, American Airlines, Spirit Airlines and United Airlines to suspend flights.
Delta is the slowest airline to restore operations. American and United had canceled fewer than 50 flights each as of midday Monday, according to FlightAware.
Delta’s strategy in the wake of the software outages differs from that of other major U.S. airlines, aviation experts say. Rather than relying more on delays, the airline canceled many flights. It now appears to be struggling to resume operations and reschedule passengers who were stranded for the past three days, said Robert W. Mann Jr., an aviation analyst.
Airlines like Delta “will now have to find empty seats on already heavily booked flights to reaccommodate hundreds of thousands of stranded customers whose peak season flights were canceled,” Mann said.
Another factor working against Delta is that its main hub, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, is the busiest airport in the world. Social media was filled with photos and videos of chaotic scenes and long lines at the airline’s counters over the weekend.
“Generally speaking, this gives Delta a huge advantage,” said Michael McCormick, a former Federal Aviation Administration control tower operator and assistant professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle University in Daytona Beach, Florida, referring to the Atlanta airport. “However, it also means that the myriad connections and the associated logistics have to go smoothly. The loss of automation has caused everything to fall apart.”
The outage, which disrupted devices running Microsoft Windows software, severely impacted a Delta system that “ensures all flights have a full crew in the right place at the right time,” the airline said in a statement Monday. The company said the system was “extremely complex and required the most time and manual assistance to synchronize.”
More than half of Delta’s computer systems are based on Windows, the airline said.
“We’ve had everyone in the company working around the clock to get this operation where it needs to be,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a video message to employees Monday.
Software that helps airlines schedule and track their pilots and flight attendants can become the Achilles heel for companies trying to recover from major disruptions to their operations.
Just days before Christmas 2022, winter storms severely disrupted several U.S. airlines, but the problems were particularly acute at Southwest Airlines, which lacked equipment to deal with the severe weather. Additionally, the system the airline uses to match crews to flights couldn’t keep up with a huge number of changes, forcing it, at one point, to manually reschedule pilots and flight attendants.
Southwest Airlines canceled nearly 17,000 flights, more than a third of those scheduled, in the last 10 days of the year, costing the company more than $1 billion and severely damaging its reputation for efficiency.
Delta appears to be faring better than Southwest Airlines, but the high number of cancellations and delays raises questions about why the airline has suffered as much as others. Delta has marketed itself as a premium airline and is widely regarded by Wall Street analysts as one of the best-run companies in the industry.
Delta is offering travel waivers to all customers booked for flights between Friday and Tuesday, allowing them to change their flight once without a fee. The airline said it is offering meal vouchers, hotel accommodations and transportation when possible.
But some passengers said Delta did not provide them with hotel rooms when their flights were canceled, leaving people to make their own arrangements or sleep in airport terminals.
Buttigieg said in a social media post Sunday night that the Transportation Department has received hundreds of complaints about the airline. Delta must promptly refund customers who don’t want to change flights and promptly refund meals and hotel accommodations for those affected by the delays, he said.
“No one should be stuck in an airport overnight or stuck waiting for hours to speak to a customer service agent,” Buttigieg said, adding that customers should report airlines that fail to meet their customer service requirements to the agency.
The airlines initially considered the outage to be beyond their control and that their only obligation to passengers was to rebook for free. However, the Transportation Department said Friday that the software outage was considered within the airlines’ control and that the U.S.-based carriers must compensate affected customers for the flight disruptions.
Delta was also the only airline to ban unaccompanied minors from traveling on its planes throughout the weekend. The restriction, which was originally scheduled to last through Sunday, was extended through Tuesday.
A spokesperson for the airline did not respond to questions about how many unaccompanied children were affected by the policy and why Delta was preventing them from traveling on its flights until Tuesday.
Kate Stowe’s daughter, Annabel, 11, was scheduled to fly alone Sunday morning from St. Louis to Minneapolis, bound for a summer camp in northern Minnesota. But a day before the flight, Delta notified the family that Annabel would not be allowed to fly alone, leaving Stowe and her husband, Derick, frantically trying to find an alternative. Another round-trip ticket would have cost $1,000, and Delta offered no travel credits or other assistance, Stowe said. Plus, there were no seats available on flights back to Missouri on Delta or Southwest.
They eventually found another flight for Mr. Stowe, who accompanied Annabel to Minneapolis, on Sun Country Airlines. In total, they paid an extra $700 for his unplanned trip.
“Given that the FAA has deemed this a ‘controllable’ event, how can Delta get away with doing nothing for families?” Stowe asked. “How many other children are missing out on camp or family visits right now?”
Annabel’s flight to Minneapolis, surprisingly, left on time.
Niraj Chokshi contribution to the report.