What travelers should know:
— Check your flight status on Delta’s website or via the Delta app. Passengers can seek customer service at the airport, via phone or through the airline’s @Delta Twitter account.
— Baggage handling has been a chokepoint. Some passengers checked bags with Delta only to find out later the flight was canceled, and those who fly at a later date or with another airline may be unable to quickly get checked bags back.
— Be prepared for crowded airport concourses and waits. Consider options for food, drinks and backup power for your phone, ipad or laptop in case power outlets are taken.
Delta Air Lines staggered through a second day of massive cancellations and delays as it worked to recover from a computer outage that hobbled operations and displaced more than 100,000 people around the world.
The Atlanta-based airline canceled close to 700 more flights Tuesday on top of 1,000 Monday, leaving passengers frustrated, tired and fed up at Hartsfield-Jackson International and other airports across the globe.
“It’s just really chaos. No one can tell you anything,” Tatjana Drachenberg, a traveler from Germany who spent the night at the airport sleeping on the floor. “It’s really frustrating.”
Delta CEO Ed Bastian said more cancellations and delays are likely on Wednesday “until we’re fully reset.”
“This isn’t who we are,” Bastian, who was promoted to the post in May, said in a video message issued by the airline. “I’m sorry we let you down. We’ll do everything we can to make certain this does not happen again.”
Gil West, Delta’s chief operating officer, said some systems remained unstable, causing slowness in checking-in and boarding customers and dispatching planes. Delta gate agents wrote some boarding passes by hand.
West gave a little more detail on the initial problem early Monday that caused the snarls. He said a power control module at Delta’s technology command center malfunctioned, “causing a surge to the transformer and a loss of power.” Power was restored but some systems and network equipment didn’t switch to backups.
As Delta struggled to get its flight schedule back on track, pilots and flight attendants whose work periods are federally capped to prevent fatigue were “timing out” and unable to work flights that had been delayed. That led to more cancellations.
Delta says it operates about 6,000 daily flights worldwide, so Tuesday’s cancellations hit a relatively small percentage. But they affected tens of thousands of travelers, and hundreds more flights were delayed.
Airlines “are a little bit further behind than other technology industries,” said Matt Goldberg, vice president of global solutions for SevOne, a digital infrastructure management firm. “Everyone’s been playing catch-up. Even air traffic control is outdated.”
Goldberg said Delta’s backup systems may not have had the capacity to run the systems, causing the slowness.
“The airline industry is very much about customer-facing technology, because it’s very competitive,” Goldberg said. “It’s great to have flashy apps and a flashy website, but if you can’t board a plane, it’s a problem.”
Airline mergers can add complexity to critical back-end technology infrastructure as carriers build on older systems over years and decades. Delta and Northwest airlines merged several years ago, following bankruptcy reorganizations at both.
CEO: Redundancy in place
Bastian, the CEO, said Delta has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into technology infrastructure upgrades, including backup systems, “to prevent what happened yesterday from occurring.”
“We did have a redundant backup power source in place, but unfortunately some of our core systems and key systems did not kick over to the backup power source when we lost power, and as a consequence of that, it caused our entire system effectively to crash. And we had to re-book and start the operation up from scratch,” Bastian said.
Robert Johnson, executive vice president at data protection firm Vision Solutions, said even if companies invest in backup systems, some companies don’t test them as often as they should because “testing can be disruptive itself.”
Testing is normally done during off-hours, Johnson said. But with a 24/7 operation like a global airline that operates flights around the world at every hour of the day and night, “that’s difficult for companies to do.”
Similar computer outages have snarled other big carriers, including Southwest Airlines just last month.
Delta in recent years had taken pride in strong on-time stats and few cancellations. This week’s episode destroyed some of the goodwill.
“It’s been horrible,” said Richard Tatro, of New Hampshire, who was connecting in Atlanta to get to Tucson. “Right now there’s a lot of people that will never fly Delta ever again.”
‘The absolute worst’
Tatro said he travels often for work and that “this is the absolute worst experience I’ve ever encountered.”
He said Delta front-line workers were overwhelmed by the sheer number of people.
“They should have had every Delta higher-up on the floor, talking to people,” Tatro said.
Drachenberg said in the congested concourses overnight, thousands of travelers crowded into gate areas and walkways and stood in long lines trying to get information about their flights. “They had a really long wait, just for a simple question like, ‘What do I do next? ” she said.
On the concourse, “you have no place to sit. There were a lot of people sitting on the floors and sleeping on the floors.”
Many hotels were booked and rental cars were taken, leaving few options for stranded travelers.
With thousands of people crowded onto the concourse for hours on end, some travelers were running out of cell phone battery and laptop power while struggling to get customer service help from Delta. Some with small children or babies and were stuck overnight in the crowded airport.
“The children were getting fussy,” Tatro said. “The concourses were just crazy.”
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