Delta Airlines has been facing operational challenges for the past five days since the July 19 CrowdStrike outage. As of 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, the airline had canceled 460 mainline flights on Tuesday, which accounted for 13% of its schedule. Additionally, 21% of Delta’s schedule was delayed. While cancellations by Endeavor, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta, had moderated, they still accounted for 2% of its Tuesday schedule.
Technical Challenges and Recovery Efforts
Delta revealed that more than half of its IT systems are Windows-based, and the failure of CrowdStrike required manual repair and reboot of affected systems. The airline also mentioned that various applications needed additional time to synchronize and start communicating with each other. Delta emphasized that one of its critical systems, ensuring all flights have a full crew in the right place at the right time, is complex and required extensive manual support to synchronize.
Customer Compensation and Dissatisfaction
In response to the disruptions, Delta stated that impacted customers would receive SkyMiles points, travel vouchers, and reimbursement for additional expenses incurred. However, passengers like Akhtar Nawab, who holds Diamond Medallion status, expressed dissatisfaction with the compensation measures. Nawab shared his experience of significant delays and cancellations, highlighting the lack of preparedness on Delta’s part.
Despite efforts to notify customers about delays and cancellations through text and the Fly Delta app, Delta admitted that its digital tools were overwhelmed, leading to performance challenges. Nawab mentioned that even Delta’s specialized Diamond Medallion call center agents lacked sufficient information to assist passengers effectively.
The Travel Weekly has raised important questions about Delta’s lack of redundant systems to ease recovery from third-party outages like the CrowdStrike incident. Delta is yet to provide detailed explanations about the ongoing issues and the expected timeline for complete recovery. The airline’s travel waiver related to the disruption is set to expire soon, putting pressure on Delta to resolve the situation promptly.
Progress Amidst Challenges
Despite the spate of cancellations on Tuesday, Delta seems to be making progress in resetting its operations. Compared to the 1,159 mainline flights canceled on Monday, the pace of cancellations on Tuesday was slower. This indicates that Delta is gradually overcoming the operational hurdles it has been facing over the past few days.
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