The Biden administration is opening up an investigation into Delta Air Lines as the carrier’s operational meltdown stretched to a fifth day of mass cancellations in the wake of an IT outage affecting industries worldwide on Friday.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Aviation Consumer Protections is looking into the airline’s “continued widespread flight disruptions,” and “reports of concerning customer service failures,” the agency said Tuesday morning.
That revelation comes as the Atlanta-based carrier has canceled 1,100 flights daily — or more — on four straight days from Friday through Monday.
Want more aviation news? Sign up for TPG’s free biweekly Aviation newsletter.
On Tuesday, Delta had already canceled 420 additional flights — about 12% of its operation as of 9:15 a.m. EST, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. Flight cancellations totals on each of the past several days have mounted as the day has gone on.
The disruptions have led to chaotic scenes at airports across the country, particularly at Delta’s home base, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL).
Frustrated passengers, long lines for customer service and images of travelers resting on airport concourse floors have been commonplace in recent days.
“We have made clear to Delta that they must take care of their passengers and their customer service commitments,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in announcing the investigation Tuesday, which “will continue to evolve,” the department said, as it processes a high volume of consumer complaints.
Several U.S. airlines and many more globally were affected by Friday’s IT glitch at Austin-based CrowdStrike, which caused major problems for Microsoft clients.
Daily Newsletter
Reward your inbox with the TPG Daily newsletter
Join over 700,000 readers for breaking news, in-depth guides and exclusive deals from TPG’s experts
However, Delta’s problems have snowballed even as other U.S. carriers recovered.
Delta has canceled more than 5,000 flights since Friday.
Crew scheduling system problems
In an update Monday, CEO Ed Bastian noted nearly half of the carrier’s global IT systems are Windows based, and required Delta staff to manually repair and reboot each machine, “with additional time needed for applications to synchronize and start communicating with each other.”
The problems have caused particular problems with Delta’s critical crew-scheduling system, that helps the airline get crews to the right place at the right time.
U.S. travelers know all too well how significantly crew scheduling software outages can affect air travel. Southwest Airlines’ holiday 2022 meltdown was greatly exacerbated by problems with its crew scheduling systems, which caused mounting problems — and contributed to nearly 17,000 cancellations – following a December winter storm just before Christmas.
Delta says it’s providing affected passengers with an option with flight credits for future use, or cash refunds for eligible travelers. You can submit a refund request at delta.com/refund.
The airline also notes it’s providing stranded passengers with meals, hotel and ground transportation per its commitments listed on the Airline Customer Service Dashboard.
Read more, here, on what you can do if you’re affected by Delta’s meltdown.
When will Delta’s meltdown end?
In the meantime, as Delta staff works “around the clock” to get operations back on track, CEO Ed Bastian said in a video message to employees Monday — a message that left uncertainty on when the problems might finally end:
“Keep taking great care of our customers and each other in the coming days,” Bastian said.
Related reading:
