As Travel Chaos Continues, Government Opens Delta Investigation

The U.S. Department of Transportation is launching an investigation into Delta Airlines after the company canceled thousands of flights in the wake of widespread IT outages that started last Friday. But while other airlines have gradually resumed operations, Delta is still leaving thousands of passengers stranded across the country.

Delta has canceled over 5,500 flights since early Friday morning as a result of the outages caused by the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, which took down 8.5 million Microsoft systems around the world due to a faulty update. More than 700 flights were canceled on Monday alone, accounting for about two-thirds of all worldwide cancellations, according to CBS News .

Tuesday is not faring much better, with FlightAware data showing over 600 cancelations by just after 11 a.m., with operations not expected to fully resume before potentially the end of the week . Meanwhile, chaotic videos of piled up luggage and passengers sleeping on airport floors have spread across social media.

After the cancelations entered the fifth straight day, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said that an investigation was being conducted by the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection to ensure that passengers are being treated fairly.

"[The U.S. Department of Transportation] has opened an investigation into Delta Air Lines to ensure the airline is following the law and taking care of its passengers during continued widespread disruptions," Buttigieg said in a statement on social media. "All airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly, and I will make sure that right is upheld."

In a statement to ABC News on Tuesday, Delta that it remains "entirely focused" on restoring operations after the update "rendered IT systems across the globe inoperable."

"Across our operation, Delta teams are working tirelessly to care for and make it right for customers impacted by delays and cancellations as we work to restore the reliable, on-time service they have come to expect from Delta," the company said. "Upward of half of Delta’s IT systems worldwide are Windows based. The CrowdStrike error required Delta’s IT teams to manually repair and reboot each of the affected systems, with additional time then needed for applications to synchronize and start communicating with each other."

The government intervention into the Delta debacle comes just months after the Department of Transportation announced new rules to force airlines to provide full refunds to customers whose flights are canceled or "significantly changed." Though it could take up to two years for the new rules to fully take effect, in the meantime, it seems that Delta won't be getting off the hook.