When Southwest Airlines melted down for days on end over Christmas 2022, they were lambasted across the media. Delta’s situation over the past several days is nearly as bad, but they aren’t getting nearly the same bad press.
Perhaps it’s that Southwest’s problems happened over Christmas, triggered initially by insufficient staffing to cover bad weather events and IT systems that couldn’t handle a reboot of their operation. Or maybe it’s that they were unique in their problems while initially other airlines faced similar challenges to Delta. Is Delta getting a pass for its inability to recover its operation because it began with CrowdStrike, which gave other airlines and even Starbucks an initial pause too?
Regardless, on Sunday American Airlines cancelled 2% of its flights – despite bad weather in Texas! – while Delta cancelled 36%. And Delta is still spinning a positive story rather than taking responsibility. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called Delta CEO Ed Bastian ‘reminding Bastian about his airline’s responsibilities to passengers’ over the weekend.
For the last decade I’ve flown first class @Delta for every single flight.
Never again.
Y’all just lost a customer for life.
Horrible customer service. Cancelled flights with no reimbursement. No answers from anyone.
RIP, @Delta, you’re dead to me. pic.twitter.com/ln7AJAr0j1
— Jason Helmes (@anymanfitness) July 22, 2024
Delta’s most recent statement is full of falsehoods.
- It begins by claiming “Delta continued its operational recovery Sunday” when Sunday’s operation was worse than Saturday’s.
- The airline blames “an outside vendor technology issue” when competitors were affected by Friday’s CrowdStrike outage, but recovered from it. Delta’s crew scheduling melted down, stranding employees who couldn’t get attached to flights. Delta’s customer service collapsed. Yet they try to suggest it’s not their fault, because CrowdStrike’s issues “prompted the airline and many others to pause flying for several hours on Friday.” It’s not Friday anymore.
- While employees “were working tirelessly to care for customers” the airline was not in fact “put[ting] flight crews and aircraft back in position” and it wasn’t fair to characterize the disruption as over (that this was happening “following the disruption”).
- I’m not sure how they can claim to be “notifying customers about delays and cancellations in their itinerary via the Fly Delta app” when the app crashed for so many?
- Though they claim to be “working to make it right for our customers” but they aren’t doing nearly as much for customers as what Southwest did. Recall that Southwest reimbursed the cost of travel on other airlines to get customers where they were going – and there weren’t a lot of last minute seats open for Christmas so paying out to customers cost them up to $400 million. Delta is not doing this.
Delta vs. United in Minneapolis. And I picked the wrong team, my friends. pic.twitter.com/1FibWqXiMC
— Brian Brenberg (@BrianBrenberg) July 22, 2024
Southwest took responsibility, though their CEO hid from the media for several days. Where is Delta’s CEO? Literally every statement Delta is making deflects responsibility and blame for their meltdown. Why is Delta so successful in deflecting blame and avoiding scrutiny when Southwest was not?
As Joe Brancatelli writes,
[Delta] doesn’t seem to have the corporate humility to admit that it’s fallen and can’t get up. It may try to limp its way back to whatever passes as normal.
Either way, Delta is not fit to fly right now. It will surely have to extend its travel waiver again, but, even if it doesn’t, you shouldn’t waste your time, energy and patience hoping Delta will get you where you need to go.
It is clear that you do not want to be a Delta customer even today, which hopefully will be better than the past three days. As of 6 a.m. Eastern the carrier has ‘only’ scrubbed 15% of its flights while American is at 1% and United 0%.
Have you noticed that Southwest was not impacted by the IT issue. Just saw on YouTube that Southwest was still running on Windows NT; therefore, didn’t get the corrupted update. Same software for FedEx which no issues.
Sometimes it pays to be late to the party =:-)
I was in IT for almost 40 years and either CIO or CTO of 3 different national companies (in healthcare so systems were very critical). I agree w Pete’s position that, even though it is attributable to a Crowdstrike error, the disruptions were within the airlines’ controls. After all, a company is ultimately responsible for their IT and has to have disaster recovery, risk mitigation and contingency plans (all required by their outside Auditors as well as many Federal regulations).
I expect Delta to be forced to compensate passenger for out of pocket costs as well as likely pay a sizable fine (like SW did). On the other hand knowing DL they will likely try to solve it with 10,000 worthless Sky Peeos.
Keep Clim- err, I mean pride and ego before anything else. The real Delta motto. I hope Ed is on CNBC or Bloomberg this morning pandering this (pronounce without the “t”) BS.
Time to revive the old slogan: DELTA = Doesn’t Ever Leave The Airport.
Gary Leff wrote, “On Sunday American Airlines cancelled 2% of its flights – despite bad weather in Texas! – while Delta cancelled 36%. And Delta is still spinning a positive story rather than taking responsibility..” This fact proves that Delta Air Lines is the weekend industry leader in flight cancellations and solidifies its position as a premium airline.
Delta is the Joe Brandon of airlines .
Regardless of Delta’s problems, or any other airline or industry that relies on an outside company like “Crowdcrap”, does anyone see that reliance on one company for their service is crazy? Don’t think for one second that adversaries of the United States don’t see this weak link as a target. This issue is much larger than the affected airlines or industries. “Crowdcrap” caused the issue to begin with. The airlines and other industries using their services fell like dominos. The farther that the dominos fell, the harder the climb to get back in business. Years ago, after the Delta main computer system failed due to an improperly maintained power station on property, the airline got back on its feet within about 36 hours and fully recovered within a week. WN wasn’t so lucky as, if I recall, it took them two weeks or more to get back on line. As a result of Delta’s failure, a secondary computer center was built away from Atlanta to, hopefully, avert this scenario from happening again. In this case, neither computer center can recover from “Crowdcrap’s” failure. Hopefully, this will teach Delta and other industries to seek an alternate or a backup. I’ll bet you that every company affected by this mess will sit down with their IT managers and figure out a solution.
Not to worry….I hear they have Tom Brady now working on a solution.
Mayor Pete got his shine box and is now calling Delta out for their “premium” meltdown.
This is unforgivable on Delta’s end- pure arrogance and hubris on full display. You’ve gotta have a backup plan, and stuff like this is top-down. Heads should roll.
@Exit Row Seat, everything I have read says that Southwest Airlines runs partially on Windows 3.1 and partially on Windows 95. Of course, a lot of banking still runs on COBOL and is rock solid because of it.
It’s obvious that CEO Ed Bastain won’t appear in public before his next shipment of premium hair tonic arrives via Delta Cargo (delayed/cancelled).
He has failed (again) to get in front of a crisis and lead like someone who is paid $34M. The board is only now realizing this.
No more excuses, his assertions are no longer credible to anyone (except his own Comms team).
I am currently part of this Delta meltdown. My flight MSP to Houston was canceled last night after constant delay notifications. I am now stuck in Minneapolis until Tuesday, thus missing my doctor appointment at MD Anderson. Btw, I rebooked on United.
Airlines need to be prepared for “worst case scenarios” when it comes to customer service, most fail, Delta fails miserably. They are going to lose a fair amount of business here.
People never forget when they are left stranded with little or no option.
And this chaos is apparently even without any bad actors from outside being involved. Imagine where we’d be if the Chinese or Russians were really trying to create havoc. It looks to me like our systems are incredibly and inexcusably vulnerable to disruption. I’m not an IT guy – I don’t have the technology fix. But it’s time to seriously question what we’re doing with over-reliance on clearly trouble-prone systems.
You whiners, critics and losers needed to be reminded – yet again.
Delta is THE PREMIUM AIRLINE.
Don’t take my word for it, the data are all there.
http://www.farmersalmanac.com
Gary,
Might want to watch this. Bottom line is Windows OS based systems were most effected. Delta has a large PC IT Architecture.
Probably the best ‘low geek’ explanation of what happened that triggered the CrowdStrike outage.
https://youtu.be/wAzEJxOo1ts?si=a3x5NWROizAHY9D5
The video author, Dave, is a retired Microsoft systems engineer and one who did a lot of development work on WindowsNT and Windows2000. Very good explanation.
Nothing but schadenfreude for the Delta top brass. Glad to see this overrated, over-inflated brand get knocked down a few pegs.
This is just a small sample of what cyber warfare could look like.
I don’t think even Delta’s Com team believes what they’re putting out. It’s to the point where it looks like only a hard reset is the only way out.
@KenA, “Weekend industry leader in flight cancellations” is perfection!
I wonder why we haven’t heard from Tim? Surely he would want to brag about that kind of premium service.
IT issues happen. It’s a given.
How fast/well you recover is the real test of competency.
Seems like they rested in their laurels of “premium airline” title without giving nearly as much consideration about how to operate when IT has issues.
@Linda ,
Give it time.
Delta has become the most arrogant of all the airlines. Making status is now nearly impossible for all except those able to buy tens of thousands of dollars in tickets annually. Customer service has become laughable. And now, rumors that business class will become a coach like product. “Would you like to be able to select your seat, sir, after paying $3500 for it? That will be an additional $250. Oh, and you want priority boarding? $100, please. Oh, I’m sorry, your ridiculously high fare does not include a carry on.” Soon, it will be just a very expensive version of Spirit.
Just shows you’ve got to react quickly and book a flight on another airline when this happens. People are going to continue to be pissed at Delta, United, Southwest, and American Airlines when things go wrong and swear they will never fly them again. Yes, it sucks but be willing to throw your ticket away and go to plan B as soon as something goes wrong. In the last few years we have booked a competitor within minutes of getting a cancelled flight notice, or even potentially late on flightaware. I usually cancel back up flights when plan A is in the air.
This will change absolutely nothing. Airlines are government protected entities that have divided up the country and don’t have to do better. Just look how lopsided the contract of carriage is. Any other company would be buried under class action lawsuits. Not airlines. People can disagree with this, but flying was much more enjoyable and reliable under CAB control. Plus, higher fares would keep a lot of the idiots off the airlines
Premium customer service!
@JL100
Exactly. One of my employees notified me yesterday at 1:30 PM that their flight out this morning had canceled. I told them to book Southwest immediately since they were the only other direct flight option. I have someone flying back from Tokyo next week on a refundable Delta ticket. I’m going to book a back up flight tonight on ANA just in case.
Stuff happens. My last trip to Buenos Aires, DL was having problems with the Unions, every flight went out 4-6-8, sometimes 12 hours late. That made for delays in returning. I was mad, but not mad enough to start flying AA from DFW. I recall talking to Herb Kelleher back in the 90’s, until then SW had used a computer with a calculator-type keypad… Herb was excited, SW had just upscaled to a full keyboard, “NOW! I can start losing money like the Big Boys do!” DL will recover, same as SW did, even with the new Contract there’s so much ill-will at AA it’s headed back to Chapter 11.
@doug fantastic link
https://youtu.be/wAzEJxOo1ts?si=a3x5NWROizAHY9D5
i’m on the commercial side
i urge everyone reading this to watch that video so it will be clear to you that you likely have zero forking idea what you’re talking about
southwest was a different melt – it was a direct result of antiquated systems
the same delta systems are modern – but they were taken down by their dna
both delta and southwest then experienced complete collapse when the failure became impossible to recover from – but those are 2 distinct failures
and no board room in this country is prepared to sanction the destruction of profit to prepare for either
not defending tim dunn, but this melt is nothing to do with delta specifically; the way it did not effect other airlines is simply a function of “mustard, ketchup or mayonnaise”
bastian may be a buy-n-large CEO, but that’s a result of our national economic system, not this company
+++
running commercial systems, topologies, architectures and products that are exposed to the internet are by default not fit for purpose for companies that comprise the baseline of our NATIONAL SECURITY
100% of the entire Military Industrial Intelligence Complex runs OFF the internet on it’s own network
the individual machines run windows, but the networks themselves are extremely difficult to break in to, and although i’m not certain, i would expect the guys and gals scattered at various complexes around the beltway DO NOT allow kernel-level execution of any products they source externally; if you don’t understand what that means, watch the video; you still may not understand it after you watch it, because like ed bastian, 99% of the planet has no idea how computing technology actually works
doing the same for US business, i.e. running hardened systems that more or less eliminate the need for vulcan (the crowdstrike product) is EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE; this is where a GIGANTIC percentage of the miic budget goes
basically, wall street dictates that no company can afford to eat profit for the necessary non-revenue spend to prevent melts
and here we are
abracadabra
Just a Public Service Reminder:
How nice the cookie and Diet Soda were on a day with no weather and no delays IS NOT the mark of a great airline.
How the airline performs on a day that it all goes Pear-Shaped is the only thing that actually matters in this business. Delta has consistently been the worst in IROPS. They were the first to tear up the Inter-Line agreements because they “were so much better than the other guys”. Sure.
Yeah, sure– but here’s yet another episode where they will STILL have thousands stranded (with no food or hotel accommodation) at ATL a week after the event.
@Doug
That’s a good video– and the guy understands NT through-and-through.
HOWEVER, he also shows himself as a guy probably spent too much time working for a single company in Redmond… in that he glosses over the WHY WOULD YOU ALLOW this question.
To puke like this? The Crowdstrike crap has to run on the kernel– and Mr Microsoft glosses over the obvious security hole in how a “quick update” can so easily defeat all the Windows protections of kernel processes.
Everybody says “the same thing could have happened on UNIX”– and that’s simply not true.
The protections for all kernel processes are religiously protected in UNIX (and MacOS and Linux that are UNIX based).
Much like the old Windows Word Macros that could crash a whole network? Microsoft revels in wide-open security and system integrity rules.
Cloud computing is the future, and this event is actually a good thing for the industry. Right now, just Microsoft, Amazon, and Google dominate the market. Hoping this mess gives the smaller players and startups a compelling value / security proposition.
That picture….is that the check in counter or the line to get into the Delta lounge?
I just had a look (7/22 at 8:51 am pdt) at the flight cancellation stats on flightaware, and did a bit of math on the posted numbers:
Total flight cancels: 1403
Delta cancels: 734 (52%)
AA cancels: 43 (3%)
UA cancels: 19 (1%)
Conclusion: Delta really has remained in meltdown mode today, with 52% of all flight cancellations for ALL airlines. The AA and UA cancel statistics look more like a normal day.
My sympathies to the frustrated DL pax waiting in line at airports around the country attempting to rebook cancelled flights. I have seen those long lines on the news again this morning. Yikes! Not a Premium experience.
I would also speculate that Delta must have the least competent IT organization of the big airlines impacted by the ClownStrike fiasco. The recovery timeline suggests they had & have no backup Plan B and no recovery plan to transition back from Plan B to Plan A.
@AC – As someone currently in a CTO role, no company can plan for “Windows is down worldwide” in this day an age of automatic updates. Even your DR/BC plans are useless unless they’re cut off from the internet and automatic updates, which would render them not secure or up to date enough to help you. Luckily we don’t use crowdstrike and were operationally only impacted by services we integrate with.
@daveS – this is exactly the powergrid warning that has been around for years, no matter how good Security is, the bad actors are constantly trying to penetrate it.
This along with all of the weather delays feels like it should be a lesson to all the airlines that maybe the round robin nature of their scheduling of planes and people is not worth the risk. When major disruption happen constantly stranding both crew and equipment out of position.
It’s always amusing to read comments and tweets that say “I’ll never fly Delta again.” As if Delta or anybody else cares. Delta management knows what every other airline knows: Most of the people they’ve left stranded and frustrated will be back. They’ll be back next time Delta suits their schedule on a business trip. They’ll be back next time they want to go to Disney World. All will be forgiven or forgotten.
As one memorable hotel exec put it, this is all “noise around the edges.”
I cannot believe Timmy has remained silent through all this!
Tim has been very busy getting shellacked on OMAAT. How long has this guy been doing his Baghdad Bob routine for DAL?
Delta is telling lies. We, three of us, have been trying to fly home from Vegas since 7/18. We had a red-eye flight to Raleigh. Sat for two hours on a hot plane – 95 degrees outside at the time. Returned to terminal, and told to wait. Waited 2 hours, and told to another hour when they finally told us the flight was canceled. At this point spent 8 hours in the airport, and it’s now 3am. They offered absolutely nothing – no vouchers, transportation or hotel. All hotels booked by now, especially going into a weekend. No hotels able to check us in until 4pm. Finally found a place that said we could check in, but upon arrival, had to wait until 5am.
Only available flight for rebooking was for 7/20 Saturday afternoon. Sat again in the airport for 7 hours, after being strung along again being told the flight was delayed, then no flight crew, then canceled. Even if we had flown, we’d be stranded at our connection, as our plane would arrive after our connection had left. You can’t even proactively book hotel, transportation, etc. because most are non-refundable, and there was no way to know we’d even arrive.
Again, no offer of vouchers, hotel, or transportation. The only thing we they keep telling us is to keep all receipts and submit for reimbursement. Only option for rebooking was again, another 2 days later, Tuesday 7/23 red-eye arriving Wed morning.
At least it was early enough to check in somewhere.
Delta is completely mis-handling this, imo. I am not a blogger, or social media poster, but if I was, I’d be posting the facts for all to see. I also realize that these companies like Crowdstrike and Delta take a stand behind disclaimers that they are not responsible, but in fact, they are, and should be held accountable. They blame Microsoft, Crowdstrike, etc, but they chose these companies and their tools for a reason, typically reducing costs and increasing their profits. They trusted them, but chose wrong, and need to truly own responsibility for it, and stop pushing their problem to their customers. I hope they are compelled by all means to provide some reasonable compensation or restitution.
Cheers.
ago
Here are the issues.
Delta’s crew tracking software suffered tremendously. It wasn’t until late yesterday that they finally got an additional server online, with more coming online today. At one point Saturday they had 1100+ crew rotations in the queue to be fixed by crew tracking. In 3.5hrs they had reduced that count by 94! Everytime they fix one rotation, it breaks another and the cycle continues. On top of that crews are on hold for hours, unable to get in touch with anyone. Crews have been stuck in the airports, which doesn’t count as legal rest. Thus they cannot work the flights they get rerouted to cover. Not to mention crews being assigned flights in cities they haven’t even flown through in the past few days. They have begged for the past 3 days for people to pick up, yet the system used to put in the pickup requests keeps going down, or scheduling ends up skipping the pickup step when running the software.
I find it comical that so many people point fingers at one airline alone. NEARLY EVERY DAMNED ONE is affected by “Cybercrap”s” failure…and then some! Those that have more flights/hospital beds/hotel rooms/restaurant reservations/doctor appointments/rental cars…etc. have been affected by “Cybercrap” the most. Hopefully that all industries that rely on this ONE company will either build their own system or find a secondary company to do what “Cybercrap” does.
@Win Whitmire
Er, because only ONE airline consistently sucks in IROPS, while using Fake Stats to claim they are “the best”? Delta has done this over, and over and over again. Because they tore up the interline agreements. Don’t invest in people and tech… just PR.
At least Southwest had the good manners to start buying tickets on other carriers to get people moved along. DL just lets them sit, even as it’s clear they don’t have the seats or the operational competence to recover from this mess.
They still have over 100,000 people stranded. Days later. Eff Delta, Eff Ed Basturdian.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/air-travel-delays-continue-airlines-recovered-global-tech-112160245
TIM DUNN!
I HAVE EXPERIENCE THE DELTA”PREMIUM SERVICE!
(LOL)
NEVER AGAIN DELTA!
TOTAL DISFUNCTION!
POOR MANAGEMENT!
I have to say American is so much Better than Delta! Even on a bad operational day at AA’S DFW hub.
AA TEAAM DOES A BETTER JOB WITH IROP!
No more Delta!
Ed is the worst thing that Delta has had in its history. He only cares about shareholders. He does not care about customers. Look what we were talking about one year ago – he changed the Frequent Flyer program, screwing its best customers. He swore he’d never back down. What did he do? Back down. His planes are very old and I’ve been on 3 757 to LAS, LAX and FLL (all from ATL), all on 757 and not one had a screen that worked and 2 had broken seat belts and tray tables. Their flight attendants are in so many uniforms schemes from the current purple, to all black, to the ‘old’uniform. Their snacks are 3 pretzels in a bag, and you too can have this in comfort plus for only $79 more per leg. He just does not care about the customer and he puts no money into building a modern airline with newer jets (even the A321 are getting old). They use them to death and the result is burned out crews, and planes that are filthy and old, and he calls himself the premium airline. Yet where is he? Why is not on TV. Admit your mistake. Tell the public what and how you are going to fix it and how it wont happen again and just be sincere and honest. But that is not Ed, just like he did during the sky miles crap one year ago. Wish he’d go to another airline.
Far more than AA or UA, Delta has put nearly all its eggs in a super hub: Atlanta. So from connections to computing to aircraft, it seems Delta’s over-reliance on a megahub comes back to haunt it repeatedly. UA and AA both have vast hubs at Chicago and both recover far more efficiently than DA at Atlanta.
@Tim – I understand no company has a technical workaround if something as significant as this occurs. However you have to have continuity plans. I was CIO and CTO of major hospital management companies. People’s lives depended on our systems so we had to have procedures, that were tested, to continue care delivery if all systems went down.
Also for your comment that when this happens no company can handle it. Well it appears AA and, to a lesser extent, UA handled it pretty well since they recovered much quicker than DL. It isn’t just the event but what you do if it happens. I’m sure there will be a lot of review regarding DL’s policies and procedures, along w their IT environment, to see how to avoid this cluster in the future.
AC: Disaster recovery is all about having workarounds to address situations exactly like this. I spent the last five years at a large retailer whose turnover is over twice Delta’s working to harden systems and develop recovery strategies for large-scale systems interruptions such as this. DL’s situation is complicated by scheduling and aircraft in the wrong place but those issues were exacerbated by their IT totally falling flat on its face and being unable to recover.
Sorry AC, that should have been directed at Tim.
@tim (not tim dunn obviously)…..
re: your comment….
+++
As someone currently in a CTO role, no company can plan for “Windows is down worldwide” in this day an age of automatic updates. Even your DR/BC plans are useless unless they’re cut off from the internet and automatic updates, which would render them not secure or up to date enough to help you.
+++
maybe you missed my post, but you precisely describe how it is possible to plan for “windows down worldwide”…. use hardened systems disconnected from the internet…. and no you don’t need automatic updates to keep the failover systems running…. it’s called fricking SAFE MODE, dude…. i suggest you watch that video link above
but you made the exact point that needs to be made about industries critical to NATIONAL SECURITY…. they need to be cutoff from the internet entirely!
the airlines need to be run on SCADA and unix with apple machines for the user, and use dedicated starlink comm bands
one other point in defense of Delta…..
they only have 100k stranded
at this same point 5 days in to the LUV melt they had over 1 MILLION marooned