Delta still grounded as most airlines creep out of tech quandary
Sopuruchi Onwuka
One of America’s biggest airlines with a crucial route connecting Nigeria, Dalta Airlines, is exceptionally affected by the Friday’s tech glitch that plunged global businesses into lingering stalemate.
Although most African airlines and airports were not affected by the global tech downtime due to their analogue operating systems, most international institutions and corporations including airlines, health services, financial services and media were had battled to return online since Friday when a Strikeforce deployed a faulty security update software on Microsoft Windows.
Over 5000 flights were delayed on Friday while over 3500 were outrightly cancelled when computers would not conclude reboot.
At global airports and airlines surveyed by The Oracle Today, backlogs of delays and cancellations continued across the weekend and extended into the new week.
Delta which leads in the Lagos-Chicago route has been unable to come out of the deadlock since Friday, stranding its passengers, incurring huge operating losses and leaving frustrated passengers confused.
Reports reviewed by The Oracle Today on Tuesday showed that Delta was still struggling for a fourth straight day to recover from the tech outage. Chief information officer said Monday that the airline was still trying to fix a vital crew-scheduling program.
Chief Executive Officer CEO Ed Bastian said it would take “another couple days” before “the worst is clearly behind us.”
US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said his agency had received “hundreds of complaints” about Delta, and he expects the airline to provide hotels and meals for travelers who are delayed and to issue quick refunds to customers who don’t want to be rebooked on a later flight.
“No one should be stranded at an airport overnight or stuck on hold for hours waiting to talk to a customer service agent,” Buttigieg said. He vowed to help Delta passengers by enforcing air-travel consumer-protection rules.
Bastian said in a video for employees that he told Buttigieg, “You do not need to remind me. I know, because we do our very best, particularly in tough times, taking care of our customers.”
Local reports hold that Delta has canceled more than 5,500 flights since the outage started early Friday morning, including at least 700 flights canceled on Monday, according to aviation-data provider Cirium. Delta and its regional affiliates accounted for about two-thirds of all cancellations worldwide Monday, including nearly all the ones in the United States.
United Airlines was the next-worst performer since the onset of the outage, canceling nearly 1,500 flights. United canceled only 17 Monday flights by late Tuesday morning.
Other airlines that were caught up in the first round of groundings also returned mostly to normal operations by Monday. That included American Airlines, Spirit Airlines, Frontier Airlines and Allegiant Air.
Bastian, the Delta CEO, said in a message to customers Sunday that the airline was continuing to restore operations that were disrupted. One of the tools Delta uses to track crews was affected and could not process the high number of changes triggered by the outage.
