Janice R. Andrews
Delta Airlines had to postpone 1,250 more flights yesterday, on top of the 3,500 it had previously canceled since the interruption started late Thursday. This was due to the ongoing worldwide outage of CrowdStrike’s security software. Tens of thousands of Delta customers are stuck as a result of this severe disruption; many will have to wait days for rescheduled flights, which has led to a lot of trip cancellations and postponements. Delta has not yet disclosed the return date of regular operations.
Operational Challenges for Delta
With 5,000 scheduled flight cancellations and 1,700 delayed flights since Friday, Delta has canceled one-third of its flights. “In particular, one of our crew tracking-related tools was affected and unable to effectively process the unprecedented number of changes triggered by the system shutdown,” said Delta CEO Ed Bastian, elucidating the scope of the impact.
The Cause of the Issue
The problem started with a CrowdStrike software upgrade that impacted 8.5 million Windows PCs and put many of them in a boot loop that could only be fixed by experts with physical access to the devices. According to CrowdStrike, the cause of this issue was a malfunctioning sensor meant to identify malicious activity, which “triggered a logic error that resulted in an operating system crash.”
Affecting Public Services and Other Airlines
The US carrier that has been hit the most is Delta, with United Airlines having canceled around 266 flights, or roughly 9% of its Sunday schedule. First, stranded guests were told by both United and Delta that they would not reimburse for expenses because they had no influence over the CrowdStrike crash. But U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stepped in and said the problem was self-inflicted. He made it mandatory for airlines to pay for meals, housing, and transportation when there are delays more than three hours, as required by law.
Attempts to Reduce the Crisis
Today, CrowdStrike made the announcement that a “significant” number of devices are back online and that the automatic remedy for the problem is almost ready to be deployed. The US and UK public health and public services have also been severely disrupted by the outage; the NHS has warned patients that delays may occur as a result of the disruption’s aftereffects.
As CrowdStrike keeps trying to properly fix the software problems and Delta tries to stabilize its operations, the situation is still unstable. It is recommended that travelers be informed via official sources and get ready for any additional inconveniences.
