Flight cancellations soar past 4,500 as woes spill into Saturday; Delta and United hardest hit

20.07.2024 - 19:16 / thepointsguy.com / Pete Buttigieg

Flight cancellations continue to climb this weekend in the wake of Friday's IT outage that wreaked havoc globally — affecting everything from air travel to banking and critical infrastructure.

Though airlines successfully got planes back in the air Friday following early-morning operational pauses by several carriers, residual disruptions have made Saturday another messy day at airports.

By late morning Saturday, airlines had canceled more than 1,100 flights in the U.S., according to data from flight-tracking site FlightAware. That comes just a day after airlines canceled an additional 3,400 flights — and delayed a staggering 12,895 more — on Friday. All told, more than 4,500 flights have been canceled in the U.S. and another 16,000 delayed since the IT outage first began affecting flights.

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Among U.S. carriers, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines appear to be experiencing the worst residual operational effects this weekend, with hundreds of cancellations between the two carriers.

Delta reported more than 600 of its mainline and regional Delta Connection flights planned for Saturday had been canceled, noting most of those fell in the morning and early afternoon hours.

"Additional cancellations are expected as some of Delta's technology continues to recover from Friday morning's vendor-caused issue," the Atlanta-based carrier said in a statement.

Delta has also paused all unaccompanied minor flying until Sunday, affecting all children under the age of 18 planning to fly solo.

For its part, United said late Friday that most of its systems had recovered from the tech outage, but warned its operation "may continue to experience some disruption."

As of late morning Saturday, United had canceled more than 275 flights, about 9% of its operation.

The carrier, like Delta and other U.S. airlines, has issued a travel advisory that allows even passengers traveling on restrictive tickets to make itinerary changes — and without a fare difference.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is considering these disruptions to be "controllable" cancellations and delays, a spokesperson for the agency told TPG Friday.

That means the DOT sees these flight problems as the airline's responsibility — and is calling on airlines to fulfill promises made on the Airlines Customer Service Dashboard, found at FlightRights.gov, for guarantees like meals, hotel and ground transportation costs for stranded passengers.

"Our department has reminded airlines of their responsibilities to passengers," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wrote on social media Friday. "As with any mechanical or technical failure, airlines are required in this case to take care of