By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO (AA) – Thousands of travelers around the globe were stranded Monday after Delta Airlines flights were grounded due to a system outage that caused massive delays even after it was fixed.
The outage apparently started with a power outage in Atlanta, where Delta is headquartered, at approximately 2:30 a.m. local time (0630GMT).
“Large-scale cancellations are expected today,” Delta said in a statement a few hours later. “All flights en route are operating normally. We are aware that flight status systems, including airport screens, are incorrectly showing flights on time.”
The system was offline for more than six hours until the company was able to fix the issue at approximately 8:40 a.m. (0840GMT). Still, the airline expected the outage to wreak havoc for customers throughout the day.
“A Delta ground stop has been lifted and limited departures are resuming following a power outage in Atlanta that impacted Delta computer systems and operations worldwide,” the company said soon after the systems became operational. “Cancellations and delays continue. Customers heading to the airport should expect delays and cancellations.”
Delta ranks third among all airlines around the world for passengers carried, according to aviation industry analysts at The International Air Transport Association. Roughly 180 million passengers use Delta every year, the company boasts.
While official numbers are not yet available, it is likely the number of travelers stranded by the system shutdown totals in the tens of thousands.
“Interestingly, every Delta employee seems to be calm about this giant outage like it's no big deal,” tweeted cybersecurity consultant Jake Williams, who was marooned because of the glitch. “’These things happen.’ No, they don't.”
Giant system failures seem to becoming less and less uncommon for the airline industry.
Southwest Airlines was forced to cancel more than 2,000 flights last month when a computer outage inhibited flyers from checking in.