Air travel complaints in 2017
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September 11, 2017 Atlanta: Delta Air Lines canceled 900 flights as tropical storm Irma made its way towards Atlanta. Southwest Airlines, the second-largest carrier at Hartsfield-Jackson, canceled all of its Atlanta flights after 1 p.m., amounting to 60 to 70 percent of its Atlanta flights scheduled for Monday. Atlanta-based Delta said the expected north-south winds of 40 mph or greater will run perpendicular to the five parallel runways at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, which can potentially threaten the safety of landings. Planes are best suited to takeoff and land into the wind, according to the airline. The strong crosswinds are expected to exceed the operating limits of some of Delta’s mainline and regional jets. The 900 Delta cancellations Monday include hundreds of flights at the airline’s massive hub in Atlanta, as well as continuing cancellations in Florida and the Caribbean. Delta has also canceld some of its flights into Brunswick, Ga. Even more flights could be canceled due to wind shear, lightning and other weather. Tropical storm, Irma began to make its presence know in Atlanta on Monday, Sept. 11, 2017. The storm claimed at least one life in Georgia, state emergency management officials said Monday. The death occurred in Worth County. Further details weren’t immediately available. Irma’s staggering march up into northern Florida was expected to bring high winds and heavy rains to Atlanta Monday afternoon — though perhaps not quite as high or as heavy as earlier feared. Georgia Power’s outage map showed 400,000 of its customers were down, and the electric membership cooperatives, as of 12:45 p.m., added another 268,000 to the total. Most of the failures were along the Georgia coast and in South Georgia. But the outages began to creep northward: 22,000 metro Atlanta customers had no power as of 12:20 p.m., the Georgia Power map showed. JOHN SPINK/JSPINK@AJC.COM