ATLANTA -- The Chief Operating Officer of Delta Air Lines issued a statement Tuesday explaining why flight delays and cancelations are continuing.
Delta Air Lines officials said the computer outage that grounded hundreds of flights for several hours early Monday causing a cascading ripple effect that is still causing delays for travelers around the world, was due to a power loss.
In a statement on its website, Delta COO Gil West's statement said, “Monday morning a critical power control module at our Technology Command Center malfunctioned, causing a surge to the transformer and a loss of power. The universal power was stabilized and power was restored quickly. But when this happened, critical systems and network equipment didn’t switch over to backups. Other systems did. And now we’re seeing instability in these systems."
West went on to say that the system used by airport customer service agents to process check-ins was experiencing slowness.
"Delta agents today are using the original interface we designed for this system while we continue with our resetting efforts," West said.
West explained that the system slowed caused a domino effect that continued to affect flights on Tuesday. His statement said:
When Delta doesn’t fly aircraft, not only do customers not get to their destination, but flight crews don’t get to where they are scheduled to be. When this happens, unfortunately, further delays and cancellations result. And flight crews can only be on duty for a limited time before rest periods are required by law.
“Flight crews – pilots and flight attendants – carry out their responsibilities in a rotation, a schedule of flights and hotel reservations, that is usually three or four days.
“As cancelations occur, rotations become invalid. Multiplied across tens of thousands of pilots and flight attendants and thousands of scheduled flights, rebuilding rotations is a time-consuming process.
“And keeping safety top of mind is a constant in our actions, and especially while we’re running our operation in recovery mode and making sure flight crews on duty have all they need to operate a safe flight, especially consistent delivery of information."
Earlier Tuesday, Delta officials admitted their mobile app and web site information was not up to par when it came to providing flight status on Monday, but insisted that as of Tuesday afternoon that information is up to date.
Airline officials said the glitch is not due to a hacker, but they cannot say if their system was compromised during the systems outage.
As for how long things will take to get back to normal? They are taking it day-by-day. They do know that Tuesday is better than Monday was.
For Tuesday only, if Delta cancels a flight, and a passenger chooses not to fly as a result, they will receive a full refund, plus a $200 travel voucher.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian later reiterated in a video that the airline is fully intending on being back up to full strength by early Wednesday. Bastian apologized once again, saying, "This isn't who we are."
