Most airlines except one are recovering from the CrowdStrike tech outage. The feds have noticed


Published: 4 months ago

Updated: 4 months ago

Reading time: 3 minutes

Delta Air Lines is struggling for a fourth straight day to recover from the tech outage, even as other airlines are returning to nearly normal levels of service

As of Monday, Delta Air Lines continues to face challenges from a worldwide technology outage, now in its fourth day, while the majority of other airlines are gradually resuming regular operations. The issue has drawn the attention of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has expressed concern over the high number of cancellations and the impact on travelers.

Delta has struggled to recover from the outage caused by a faulty software update, resulting in the cancellation of over 5,500 flights since Friday, with at least 700 more on Monday. This accounts for about two-thirds of all cancellations worldwide. United Airlines has also been significantly affected, canceling nearly 1,500 flights since Friday, but with a notable improvement on Monday.

In contrast, other airlines caught up in the initial wave of groundings, including American, Spirit, Frontier, and Allegiant, have largely resumed normal operations. Delta CEO Ed Bastian attributed the prolonged issues to a tool used for tracking crews, which was overwhelmed by the high volume of changes caused by the outage during one of the busiest travel weekends of the summer.

The Transportation Secretary has emphasized the importance of Delta providing necessary accommodations and refunds to affected passengers and has vowed to enforce air-travel consumer-protection rules. The outage has brought back memories of the Southwest Airlines debacle in December 2022, which resulted in a significant fine for the airline.

The root cause of the tech problems affecting various industries, including airlines, hospitals, and businesses, has been traced to a faulty update of cybersecurity software from CrowdStrike to Microsoft computers. Microsoft reported that 8.5 million machines were impacted, and while CrowdStrike has deployed a fix, it may take a significant amount of time to restore all affected systems.


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