Delta Air Lines struggles to recover from IT outage

FORT LAUDERDALE – The big three air carriers, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines are continuing to struggle as they recover from Friday’s information technology outage. Currently, passengers are being rebooked to flights that may depart as early as Tuesday morning.

According to FlightAware, 35,204 flights worldwide were delayed Saturday. 9,149 of those delays were in the United States. 2,146 flights were delayed Saturday. More than 1500 flights have been canceled Sunday. Since the calamity began Friday morning, Delta has canceled 3,500 flights.

These disruptions have dampened enthusiasm as individuals booking air travel has soared. Americans plan to take over 800 million interstate trips in 2024, which is the highest since 2019.

Delta attempts to make it right

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian issued a letter Sunday acknowledging those concerns.

The technology issue occurred on the busiest travel weekend of the summer, with our booked loads exceeding 90%, limiting our reaccommodation capabilities,” Bastian wrote. “I want to apologize to every one of you who have been impacted by these events. Delta is in the business of connecting the world, and we understand how difficult it can be when your travels are disrupted.”

Additionally, Delta says they’ve offered meal vouchers, travel vouchers, hotel accommodations and transportation.

The outage has extended beyond airports. Businesses, government agencies, health and emergency services, banks, schools and universities have experienced disruptions.

Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike admitted a sensor configuration update to its Falcon platform “triggered a logic error” and led to computer crashes. In layman’s terms, it resulted in the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ appearing on many Microsoft-based networks.

Troy Hunt, a cybersecurity researcher behind the password-breach monitoring service HaveIBeenPwned, categorized the outage as catastrophic.

“They also usually operate in what we’d call a “privileged” space on your machine, that is they have very broad-reaching control in order to detect and mitigate risks, Hunt explained on X, formerly known as Twitter. “That also means that if something goes wrong with an update, it’s able to catastrophically nuke your machine.”

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