Travelers wait in line at a Delta Airlines counter at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, on July 19, 2024. Airlines around the world faced disruption on an unprecedented scale after a widespread global computer outage grounded planes and created chaos at airports.
Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Ed Bastian apologized and offered frequent flyer miles to travelers for thousands of flight cancellations as the carrier struggled to recover from Friday’s global IT outage, an outage that drew criticism from Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The Atlanta-based airline canceled more than 4,600 flights from Friday to Sunday, more than any other airline, according to aviation data firm OAG.
As of Monday morning, Delta had already canceled another 700 flights, or 19 percent of its main run, accounting for more than half of the cancellations in the U.S., according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.
The delays and cancellations put Delta in the rare spotlight for a carrier whose leaders pride themselves on reliability and punctuality.
“We continue to receive reports of unacceptable disruptions and customer service conditions at Delta Air Lines, including hundreds of complaints filed with our Department,” Buttigieg said in an emailed statement late Sunday. “I have made it clear to Delta that we expect the airline to provide immediate refunds” to customers who chose to cancel their trips due to the holiday as well as “timely reimbursements for food and hotel nights to consumers affected by the delays and cancellations , as well as adequate customer service to all their passengers.”
Outages continued at Delta, while most other carriers have recovered. American Airlines he said he was almost back to normal by Saturday. united airlines had increased flight cancellations Sunday with 9% of its schedule canceled, or 260 flights, according to FlightAware, but still below Delta’s.
“I want to apologize to each of you affected by these events,” Bastian said in a message to customers. “Delta is in the business of connecting the world, and we understand how difficult it can be when your travels are disrupted.”
The airline offered flight attendants extra pay to pick up shifts, according to a staff memo on Sunday. The carrier called some of them on their personal phones to come, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. High demand during one of the busiest times of the summer prompted the airline to find alternative flights for affected travelers, Bastian said in his note.
As of Sunday, research firm Raymond James expected a financial hit of more than $160 million for Delta.
Delta Air Lines has a number of Microsoft tools affected by the outage, “one of the tools related to crew tracking in particular was affected and was unable to effectively process the unprecedented number of changes caused by the system shutdown,” Bastian said in his note.
This would make the event similar to an issue Southwest Airlines it suffered, on a much larger scale, in late 2022 when it failed to recover from severe winter weather for days.
A faulty software update from the cyber security company CrowdStrike that crippled some Windows-based programs also hit the banking and healthcare industries.
