Delta CEO apologizes for glitch as flight cancellations rise

Bloomberg

Delta Air Lines Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian apologized for a computer failure that halted flights for several hours and grounded thousands of passengers as the second-biggest U.S. carrier struggled to restart its worldwide operations.
More than 100 flights are expected to be canceled Tuesday morning, about 200 could be delayed and those numbers could grow overnight, the airline said on its website as it continued recovery operations. A power outage at Delta’s Atlanta base about 2:30 a.m. Monday interrupted computer operations, resulting in the cancellation of about 1,000 flights the same day, it said. Flights resumed on a limited basis about six hours later.
“I apologize for the challenges this is creating for you with your travel experience,” Bastian said in a video posted on the website. “The Delta team is working very, very hard to restore and get these systems back as quickly as possible. It’s an all hands on deck effort.”
The disarray at Delta marked the second time in less than a month that a system failure forced mass flight cancellations at a large U.S. carrier. Southwest Airlines Co., the biggest U.S. discount airline, said a disruption July 20 would cost it “tens of millions” of dollars after more than 2,300 flights were canceled.
Whether Delta had an adequate backup system “is certainly a legitimate question,” said Bob Mann, president of aviation consultant R.W. Mann & Co. and a former airline executive. “Why didn’t the backup systems perform, or what was it about the systems that if they performed, it still didn’t allow the systems to communicate?” Delta fell less than 1 percent to close at $37.44 in New York, leaving the shares down 26 percent this year.

PASSENGERS STRANDED
The airline said it had operated about 2,340 of its almost 6,000 scheduled flights as of 3:40 p.m. Monday. It carried about 500,000 passengers daily during July, its busiest month, Delta said on its website.
Among those stranded was Harold Jimenez, 29, who had to re-book his ticket for Tuesday to fly to Nashville, Tennessee, from New York’s LaGuardia Airport. “I’ve been here since 6 a.m. I was supposed to takeoff at 8:40 a.m., and they told us it would be delayed until 11:30 a.m.,” Jimenez said. “But now they just canceled it.”
While the airline said it was giving snacks and beverages to passengers facing extended delays, passenger David Brennan at London’s Heathrow Airport said food vouchers ran
out. He was scheduled to travel to
San Francisco through Seattle on a 10-day vacation.
“I have two children. We have been here since 7:30 this morning,” he said. “It took two hours for them to tell us what had happened after the system went down. Then the pilot came and they said the flight was canceled because the crew can’t work more than 10 hours.”
Six flights were canceled at Tokyo’s Narita airport Monday, and some delays are expected Tuesday, Delta’s Japan-based spokeswoman Hiroko Okada said. “We provided hotel accommodation to several
hundred passengers,” she said. “Many remain at the airport, while some went home. Some booked hotels on their own.”
WAIVING FEES
Delta waived change fees and fare differentials on ticket prices for passengers whose flights were canceled or delayed, according to a statement on its website. Passengers must begin their trip by Friday. The company also offered $200 travel vouchers to passengers whose flights were canceled or delayed by more than three hours. “For those of you who’ve been inconvenienced and need to access and make changes to your travel plans, we’ve instituted system wide waivers,” Bastian said in the video. The carrier booked inconvenienced travelers on other airlines in select cases but largely accommodated them on its own flights, spokesman Michael Thomas said.