Delta is still cancelling hundreds of flights daily

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Delta Airlines is now facing a federal investigation. Other major airlines are basically back to normal after last week's global software meltdown. Delta is not. The carrier based in Atlanta canceled hundreds more flights today. U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says that's prompted the department to open a formal investigation.

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PETE BUTTIGIEG: Part of why we are opening this investigation is the scale of the problem. I'm hear a lot of things that I'm very concerned about, including people being on hold for hour and hours trying to get a new flight, people having to sleep on airport floors.

SHAPIRO: NPR transportation correspondent Joel Rose is following this. Hi, Joel.

JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.

SHAPIRO: It sounds like a real mess. What's going on at Delta?

ROSE: Yeah. They are still struggling to get back to normal operations. It's now five days after this major IT outage that was caused by a faulty update from the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike on Friday. That grounded planes around the world. But most U.S. airlines are now back to normal operations or at least pretty close to it.

Since then, Delta has canceled more than 5,000 flights, including another 460 cancellations today and over a thousand delays today. And, you know, that is what's prompted the U.S. Department of Transportation to open an investigation. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned that Delta must, quote, "take care of their passengers and honor their customer service commitments."

SHAPIRO: According to Delta, what's the problem?

ROSE: CEO Ed Bastian has acknowledged that the company had a, quote, "horrible weekend." And in a video message to employees, Bastian said he spoke to Secretary Buttigieg over the weekend. And Bastian said he does not need to be reminded about the company's obligations to its customers.

Delta's chief information officer also spoke in that video message and said that most of the airline's IT systems are back to normal with one crucial exception. That is the system that tracks and schedules flight crews. So Delta is still scrambling to get its people into the right places. And Bastian said it may still be a few days before the worst is behind us.

SHAPIRO: But the other airlines seem to have bounced back pretty quickly from the software disaster. Why is Delta so different?

ROSE: That's really the key question, and I put that to several IT experts today, including Tim Crawford. He's the founder of the firm AVOA, which advises companies on IT strategy. Crawford says airline operations are incredibly complex, with lots of very specific computer systems. These systems are often custom built either by or for the airlines. And Crawford says these systems all have to talk to each other.

TIM CRAWFORD: So then when things go sideways, it just makes it that much harder to recover from it 'cause it's not as simple as saying, oh, we'll just reboot the system, and everything will come up and start working again. And that complexity is hidden from the customer intentionally. But unfortunately, we get to see the result of this in ways that we wish we wouldn't have to.

ROSE: That said, all of the airlines have something similar, and so why was Delta's system more fragile than the others? That may be one of the things that, you know, the Department of Transportation will look at in this investigation.

SHAPIRO: Are there any parallels here with the massive Southwest Airlines meltdown that happened a couple years ago?

ROSE: Yeah, right. You're talking about during the winter holidays in late 2022. Southwest canceled more than 16,000 flights, stranding more than 2 million passengers. And, you know, that airline also had a big problem with its crew scheduling software. The Department of Transportation ultimately fined Southwest $140 million for violating consumer protection laws. Delta, you know, may also be looking at some kind of penalty here as well, though maybe not quite that large. You know, and it is worth noting that this week, Southwest's operations were apparently not affected much at all by the CrowdStrike outage, and the airline was flying a pretty normal schedule.

SHAPIRO: NPR's Joel Rose. Thank you.

ROSE: You're welcome.

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