Delta Air Lines’ CEO has issued an apology and the carrier will waive all change fees up to and including Friday for passengers stranded by Monday’s global system outage.
Travellers booked on cancelled flights or who suffered delays of three hours have also been told they are entitled to $200 in travel vouchers.
In a video message posted to Twitter CEO Ed Bastian said: "I apologise for the challenges this has created for you with your travel experience at Delta. The team is working very, very hard to restore and get these systems back as quickly as possible."
Systems were back up about six hours later but the airline has said it expects 300 flight cancellations today.
The tech meltdown at Delta’s Atlanta hub affected the website, mobile app and check-in systems at airports.
It impacted customers worldwide with up to 1,000 fliers held up at Tokyo Narita and long delays experienced at London Heathrow.
Delta’s utility provider Georgia Power blamed the failure of a switch gear at Delta HQ as the likely cause of the outage.
It is the second major outage to hit a US airline in the past month after a faulty router at Southwest Airlines caused flight disruptions lasting nearly a week.
Several experts have called into question the industry’s contingency planning and continued use of old legacy systems.
FareCompare CEO Rick Seaney told NBC News: "There’s no doubt that a Fortune 500 company should have backup systems that kick in for these problems. If they don’t, it should be somebody’s head at the airlines."
