Delta booking glitch added to customer frustrations Monday

A glitch in Delta Air Lines’ reservation system kept customers on Monday evening from booking the tickets they wanted, adding to frustrations with the carrier’s reservations.

For weeks, people trying to get customer service help from Atlanta-based Delta have complained about hours-long phone waits. Delta had been advising travelers to first try using its online tools.

But on Monday evening, online bookings were also not functioning properly, causing people trying to buy tickets to complain on Twitter.

The airline said the problems were resolved Monday night. The website’s reservations system allowed normal bookings including economy class seats on Tuesday.

During remarks on Good Morning America on Tuesday, Delta CEO Ed Bastian discussed the more persistent problem of long waits for customer service, saying call volumes are up 40% from 2019 levels.

“ We haven’t been staffed for the massive amount of increase in calls. Questions that people are having are on the rise,” including questions about the new travel requirements, Bastian said. He said he expects it to take two to four weeks to get back to normal levels of call handling times.

Delta wasn’t the only airline to experience a technical glitch on Monday.

Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, the second-largest carrier in Atlanta, had a different problem that affected the transmission of weather information needed to operate planes. It put in place a ground stop disrupting flights for a period Monday evening, before resuming normal operations.

However, Southwest continued to have technical issues affecting travelers Tuesday.

Southwest told travelers on Twitter that “intermittent connectivity issues” were affecting its operations Tuesday.