Delta under DOT investigation as meltdown hits Day 5, and 5,000 cancellations

23.07.2024 - 20:22 / thepointsguy.com / Pete Buttigieg / Ed Bastian

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.

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On Tuesday, Delta had already canceled 442 additional flights as of 10:30 a.m. EDT, according to data from flight-tracking site FlightAware. That's about 12% of its operation. Flight cancellation totals on each of those days have mounted as the day has gone on, perhaps a foreboding sign for Tuesday's travelers.

More broadly, 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.

However, Delta's problems have snowballed even as other U.S. carriers recovered.

Delta has canceled more than 5,000 flights since Friday, per FlightAware data. Its cancellation rate has regularly topped 30% in recent days, far exceeding the 0.3% of flights it had previously canceled in 2024.

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