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Delta waiving change fees through Friday after global outage
Saturday, 09 Aug, 2016
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Delta Air Lines’ CEO issued an apology and the carrier will waive all change fees through Friday for passengers stranded by Monday’s global system outage.
Travelers booked on cancelled flights or who suffered delays of three hours or more are entitled to $200 in travel vouchers.
In a video message posted on Monday to Twitter CEO Ed Bastian said: "I apologize 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 expects at least 100 flight cancelations and an additional 200 delayed on Tuesday.
The tech meltdown at Delta’s Atlanta hub caused the entire network to go dark, including 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.
"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," FareCompare CEO Rick Seaney, told NBC News.
Are the major airlines spending enough on a ‘plan B’ to protect themselves from IT outages? Leave comments below or cast your vote in our Mole Poll on the right.
TravelMole Editorial Team
Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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