Delta Air Lines is making progress in restoring its services after a global cyber disruption and would resume normal operations on Thursday, CEO Ed Bastian said.
The Atlanta-based airline has been hit hard by the outage and has canceled more than 6,000 flights since last Friday, leaving hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded. Only 1 percent of flights on Wednesday had been canceled.
However, Bastian raised some eyebrows as he traveled to Paris on Wednesday for the start of the Summer Olympics later this week, as the airline grapples with the disruptions.
Delta is the official airline of the U.S. Olympic team. The company said he flew on a regularly scheduled Delta flight and is meeting with leaders and business partners in Paris. “Ed postponed this long-planned business trip until he was confident the airline was firmly on the path to recovery,” Delta said in a statement, adding that Bastian remained fully engaged with senior operating leaders.
The airline canceled only 47 flights, or about 1 percent of its scheduled total on Wednesday as of 12:15 p.m. EST, according to data from FlightAware. Bastian said cancellations on Wednesday were expected to be “minimal,” while operations would return to normal on Thursday.
“Our initial efforts to stabilize operations were difficult and frustratingly slow and complex,” he said in a statement. “We’ve made good progress this week and the worst effects of the CrowdStrike-induced outage are clearly behind us.”
A software update by global cybersecurity company CrowdStrike caused system problems for Microsoft customers, including many airlines, on Friday. But disruptions at other major U.S. airlines eased the next day, while at Delta continued. The US Transportation Department on Tuesday opened an investigation into the Delta disruptions, which affected more than 500,000 passengers and left people stranded across the United States.
Many customers complained of hours-long waits for help, while others were forced to rent cars, drive hundreds of miles to reach their destinations or wait days for new flights.
Rep. Rick Larsen, the top Democrat on the House Transportation Committee, said he will introduce legislation to increase airlines’ operational resilience. “The slow response of some airlines to this crisis is unacceptable,” Larsen said.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell said she is concerned that Delta is not meeting passenger rights obligations under a new law.
