Delta’s Total Collapse: Hundreds Of Thousands Stranded, Unable To Even Talk To The Airline, While Others Recover
by Gary Leff
Delta Air Lines continues to perform poorly on Sunday, with more cancellations than any other airline in the world, stemming from poor recovery efforts from the CrowdStrike outage. In percentage terms, about the only airline faring worse than Delta is Endeavor Air which is owned by Delta, although United also still struggles.
Delta cancelled nearly 1,200 flights or over a third of its operation on Saturday, and nearly half of its flights were delayed. (Endeavor Air cancelled 44% of flights.) Spirit also struggled, while American cancelled 1% of flights and Southwest cancelled just… one.
Southwest Airlines was spared by its antiquated tech, such as Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, though this tweet wasn’t actually real.
American crowed deservingly about its ability to recover from the CrowdStrike outage, noting that it had passed before Saturday for the airline. Pushing back on my suggestion that American Airlines benefited from luck being early to have CrowdStrike turn the relevant servers supporting hem off and on, a spokesperson argued,
We devised some creative solutions early on at the IOC and worked closely with the FAA to find workarounds to get our flights dispatched. Wd also had some experts onsite there within 30 minutes of the issues popping up. So probably a bit more than luck!
Delta Air Lines, whose operation usually outperforms peers, seems to also have a harder time recovering from meltdowns. As Joe Brancatelli put it in his excellent ($) newsletter,
What is Delta’s particular problem? Hard to say, but its crews and aircraft are largely out of position and the airline has had a difficult time resetting. It has sent out an all-hands-on-deck plea to pilots and flight attendants asking them to pick up extra segments in hopes of getting back to something like a normal operation.
None of this should surprise you, of course. Despite management’s huffy insistence that Delta is a “premium” operation that runs better than other airlines, the facts show that Delta’s service-recovery processes historically are atrocious. It’s an ongoing issue whenever a glitch–whether internal or external–occurs. Delta seems to have massive difficulty getting back to whatever passes for “normal” in these times.
In practice this means long lines at airports and an inability to even reach customer service.
7/20/2024 10:30 AM Travel Warning
Due to the global IT outage by @CrowdStrike on 7/19, my flight with @Delta at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has been canceled twice (7/19 and 7/20). The airport is a ZOO, long lines at the lost baggage & customer service. pic.twitter.com/oGSolX74j5
— Ethan M. Cortazzo (@Ethan_Cortazzo1) July 20, 2024
Delta crews have just as hard a time as customers, and have been stranded around the world. The airline lacked reserve crews to staff planes in order to recover. Saturday for Delta was even worse than Friday.
Passengers report being told they would have to wait 17 hours to message with an agent in the airline’s app:
I live at the airport now. Thanks, @Delta! ✈️ pic.twitter.com/x8F6MLTcso
— Liz Skalka (@lizskalka) July 20, 2024
Turns out that’s nothing, here’s 20 hours, and customers report that estimated wait times got worse from there.
Comment
byu/Stevetd16 from discussion
indelta
When these things happen our focus is usually on the passengers, but let’s not forget how hard it is for the frontline employees who generally don’t get any extra rewards for pressing through it.
I just witnessed a kind @Delta gate employee break down in tears. And frankly I totally get it. People wrongly take out their frustrations on them. I hope Delta plans on giving all the employees who are going through immense stress a really nice bonus. They deserve it
— James Bramble (@BrambleJim) July 21, 2024
The airline was silent from 10 a.m. Saturday forward, saying only before that they were ‘continuing their recovery.’
Delta is a good airline that is not doing very well right now. But it’s also an overrated airline, a result of its own PR machine that persistently beats the drum about how premium it is despite workhorse Boeing 767s whose premium passenger experience lags that of both American and United. This is a strong reminder that though it performs marginally better much of the time, and its crews are marginally friendlier, it’s still an airline and can underperform peers in dramatic ways.
