While much of the world is slowly recovering from the devastating CrowdStrike and Microsoft outages that hit countless businesses and industries last Friday, one airline was still struggling early this week.
Delta Air Lines is still dealing with numerous flight cancellations and delays, making it clear that the airline is having a much harder time bouncing back on its feet than other companies in nearly every sector of the economy.
As of midday Tuesday, more than 455 Delta flights had been canceled, far more than any other airline, and more than 650 flights were delayed, according to FlightAware data.
Why has Delta been so slow to bounce back?
Computer systems went down at airports, airlines and just about everywhere else on Friday, but Delta Air Lines is having a uniquely tough time getting things back up and running. Delta’s problems were traced primarily to a crew-tracking tool that relies on Windows, putting the airline in a tough spot as it tried to deal with a flood of schedule changes caused by the outage.
Mashable Lightspeed
“The technical issues occurred during one of the busiest weekends for summer travel, leaving flights over 90% booked and limiting re-accommodation capacity,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian wrote in a letter to customers.
He added later in the letter:
“Specifically, the issue affected the Microsoft Windows operating system. Delta has many applications that use this system, and one crew tracking-related tool in particular was affected and was unable to effectively handle the unprecedented number of changes caused by the system shutdown. Our teams are working around the clock to recover and restore full functionality.”
Deltas must be reset manually Ton Half of the company’s IT systems are Windows-based, which crashed after the CrowdStrike issue and had to be repaired manually.
“The CrowdStrike error required Delta’s IT team to manually repair and reboot each affected system, requiring additional time for applications to sync and begin communicating with each other,” the company said in a statement.
So if you’re planning on flying with Delta on Tuesday or over the next few days, know that the airline is likely still affected by the CrowdStrike outage.