Last Friday, much of the world was recovering from devastating outages caused by CrowdStrike and Microsoft that severely impacted countless businesses and industries. However, earlier this week, one airline was still struggling.
Delta Air Lines is still dealing with a large number of flight cancellations and delays. It’s clear that the airline will have a much harder time recovering than almost other companies in almost every sector of the economy.
More than 455 Delta flights were canceled around noon Tuesday, far more than any other airline, according to FlightAware. It also experienced more than 650 delays.
Why is Delta so slow to recover?
Computer systems at airports, airlines and nearly everywhere else were down on Friday, but Delta faced unique difficulties in recovering. Delta’s problems stem in large part from its reliance on Windows-based crew tracking tools, which has left the airline in trouble as it tries to cope with the huge schedule changes caused by the outage.
Mix and match speed of light
“The technical issue occurred during one of the busiest travel weekends of the summer when our bookings exceeded 90%, limiting our ability to reschedule,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian wrote in a letter to customers.
He later added in the letter:
“Specifically, this issue affects the Microsoft Windows operating system. Delta has a large number of applications that use this system. In particular, one of our tools related to crew tracking was affected and was unable to effectively handle the issues caused by this issue. Unprecedented quantitative changes.
Delta must manually reset Ton Computers. Half of its IT systems are Windows-based, which means that after a CrowdStrike problem occurs, they crash and require manual repair.
“The CrowdStrike error required Delta’s IT team to manually fix and restart each affected system, and then required additional time for the applications to synchronize and begin communicating with each other,” the company said in a statement.
So if you’re flying with Delta on Tuesday or in the coming days, be aware that there’s a good chance the airline is still suffering from CrowdStrike service outages.
