Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian has announced that operations are expected to return to normal on Thursday after CrowdStrike's global outage left the carrier in disarray for nearly a week, according to Fox News.
"The carrier will operate at a traditional level of reliability," Bastian stated in an updated note to customers on Wednesday.
Delta was the hardest hit of all U.S. carriers following Friday's outage, which caused airlines to temporarily halt operations and disrupted emergency services, banks, hospitals, and other businesses.
"While our initial efforts to stabilize the operations were difficult and frustratingly slow and complex, we have made good progress this week and the worst impacts of the CrowdStrike-caused outage are clearly behind us," Bastian noted, as reported by CNN.
The Atlanta-based airline and its regional carrier, operating under the Delta Connection brand, collectively canceled more than 7,000 flights over four days. By Wednesday, the situation appeared to be returning to normal, with Delta canceling only 51 flights, about 1% of its schedule, according to tracking service FlightAware.
However, it could still take days to rebook all Delta passengers affected by the cancellations. The Department of Transportation is investigating the meltdown caused by Friday's computer problems and estimated that more than half a million passengers were impacted by the service disruption.
"When any piece of technology I own has a glitch, my instinct is to turn it off and back on again. That simple act tends to solve almost all the issues we have," remarked Kathleen Bangs, a FlightAware spokesperson. "But for airlines, the system reboot required to coordinate new flights is not remotely simple," she added.
The greater the number of flight disruptions, the harder the reset, as more crew members flood the internal system to reschedule their next flights. Last weekend, coincidentally, was the busiest travel weekend of the summer, according to a recent note from Bastian.
In Delta's case, Bangs said she would be surprised if the current situation was exacerbated by outdated technology. However, it remains unclear why Delta's system is performing worse than its competitors. The airline declined to respond to inquiries, directing instead to recent company statements.
