Delta Airlines experiences operational outage, thousands of flights cancelled

Friday morning saw a major global IT outage that impacted every industry, including many airlines. In the US, all three of the largest US carriers (American, Delta, and United) were impacted. It is interesting to note how uneven the recovery has been across airlines.

Delta underperforms peers in recovery

FlightAware publishes data on flight cancellations and delays, and it’s interesting to see how it’s been over the last couple of days. Among the three largest U.S. carriers, operational performance has been essentially the inverse of financial performance. American Airlines has recovered very quickly, United is not doing very well, and Delta is in a terrible state.

Friday, July 19, 2024:

• Delta canceled 1,207 flights (39%) and delayed 1,867 flights (49%)
• United canceled 694 flights (22%) and delayed 1,898 flights (61%)
• American canceled 408 flights (11%) and delayed 1,757 flights (47%).

Saturday, July 20, 2024:

• Delta canceled 1,194 flights (36%) and delayed 1,426 flights (43%)
• United canceled 447 flights (15%) and delayed 1,118 flights (38%)
• American Airlines canceled 44 flights (1%) and delayed 1,305 flights (35%).

Sunday, July 21, 2024 (6:30 a.m. ET):

• Delta canceled 325 (8%) flights and delayed 121 (3%) flights
• United canceled 249 flights (8%) and delayed 66 flights (2%)
• American Airlines canceled 21 flights (0%) and delayed 104 flights (2%)

I imagine we will see many more cancellations and delays throughout Sunday and beyond, given the domino effect of operational issues across the airline industry, with planes and crews not where they should be.

Why is Delta having so much trouble right now?

It appears that American, Delta, and United were all hit by the same initial issue, but the recoveries have been very different, so what’s going on here?

I don’t think enough time has passed for us to fully assess the root cause of all this and how the IT outage may have impacted the airlines differently.

One thing is for sure: the current Delta crisis is starting to look a lot like the Southwest crisis in December 2022, as the operation reaches a point where it no longer works.

On Friday, 88% of Delta flights were delayed or canceled, and on Saturday, 79% of flights were delayed or canceled. That’s not good at all. Yet when you go to Delta’s flight status page, the airline tells you that it’s the “on-time machine,” heh.

The ever-knowledgeable @xJonNYC notes that Delta’s crew scheduling software is reportedly down (or at least it was on Saturday), meaning that crew scheduling has to manually assign pilots and flight attendants to trips. This is incredibly complex, and is exactly what happened with Southwest a few years ago.

Delta is in a total mess right now. Crews are stranded all over the world. (There’s a lot of talk about) pilots talking about their inability to get crew tracking or accommodations. 750 flights canceled so far today. https://t.co/5IdPAH53YE

— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) July 20, 2024

Who would have thought that we could compare Delta in summer 24 to the Southwest winter of 2022

— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) July 21, 2024

Delta tries to incentivize its staff to fly by paying them all sorts of overtime, but ultimately there’s not much you can do when the planes aren’t in position.

So it appears that Delta has reached a critical level of flight cancellations where the airline’s scheduling software may have stalled, and that’s not a process you want to have to manage manually.

Instead of arguing with Tom Brady about the quality of his leadership, maybe Ed Bastian should make a video apologizing to customers and explaining what’s going on. Delta is publicly blaming it on an “outside vendor technology issue,” and while that’s all to be expected for the initial problem, it doesn’t explain the lack of recovery.

In conclusion

A major global computer outage has caused major problems for airlines over the past few days. What’s interesting is how differently things have played out for airlines. American has recovered very well (for once), United is struggling, and Delta is in a horrible situation.

Apparently Delta’s crew scheduling software has largely stopped working and crews have to be manually assigned to trips, which is no small feat, especially with so many planes being moved. I’m very curious to see how the situation plays out today, and even early next week.

If you’re flying Delta or United in the next few days, I wouldn’t necessarily expect everything to go as planned…

Have any OMAAT readers been affected by Delta’s operational issues?