Delta recovers after global outage delays

Associated Press

DALLAS

At least half of all Delta Air Lines flights Monday were delayed or canceled after a power outage knocked out the airline’s computer systems worldwide.

About 14 hours after the outage at one of its facilities, Delta was struggling to resume normal operations and clear a backlog of stranded passengers. It sought to appease frustrated customers by offering refunds and $200 travel vouchers.

By midafternoon, Delta said it had canceled more than 650 flights, although its computer systems were fully functioning again.

Tracking service FlightStats Inc. counted more than 2,400 delayed flights.

Delta representatives said the airline was investigating the cause of the meltdown. They declined to describe whether the airline’s information-technology system had enough built-in redundancies to recover quickly from a hiccup such as a power outage.

Many passengers were frustrated that they received no notice of a global disruption, discovering that they were stranded only after making it through security and seeing other passengers sleeping on the floor. Delta said that the outage caused a lag in posting accurate flight-status information on its website.

A power outage at an Atlanta facility about 2:30 a.m. local time initiated a cascading meltdown, according to the airline, which is also based in Atlanta.

A spokesman for Georgia Power said the company believes a failure of Delta equipment caused the airline’s power outage. He said no other customers lost power.

Delta spokesman Eric O’Brien said he had no information on the report and that the airline was still investigating.

Last month, Southwest Airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights over four days after an outage that it blamed on a faulty network router.

United Airlines suffered a series of massive IT meltdowns after combining its technology systems with those of merger partner Continental Airlines.