Updated 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016: Delta Air Lines announced it was grounding nearly 300 flights Tuesday, a day after a computer outage hobbled the carrier’s communication and booking systems and forced it to cancel about 1,000 flights worldwide.
– NPR
Originally posted 6:13 p.m. Monday, Aug. 8, 2016: Delta Air Lines said it’s investigating the cause of today’s power outage that knocked out its computer systems worldwide. Delta canceled more than 450 flights by early afternoon, and a flight tracking service counted 2,000 delayed flights.
The event interrupted the travel plans of some Alaska residents. Among them, Dave Bass.
“We are trying to come home from Minneapolis,” Bass said.
Bass lives in Anchorage — his wife works for Alaska Public Media — and he said his family learned of the Delta problems over social media. Their early morning flight was rescheduled to the evening, and we spoke as they were driving back to the airport Monday afternoon. Bass is hoping service will be restored and he’ll be back home around midnight.
“Basically they told us if we don’t get on this flight we could be here for a long time,” Bass said.
Delta service out of Anchorage was almost back to normal as of Monday afternoon, with the company’s flights still scheduled to depart from Ted Stevens International airport, though with hours-long delays. Delta’s Monday morning flight from Juneau to Seattle was about 35 minutes late, and it’s Monday evening flight is expected to be on time, according to Delta’s online flight status.
Delta hasn’t commented on whether its IT system has enough built-in backups to quickly recover from a hiccup like a power outage.
