The U.S. Department of Transportation will investigate Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines and how it is treating passengers, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced, as the airline entered its fifth day of an operational meltdown with thousands of canceled flights.
Buttigieg said in a post on social media platform X that the DOT has opened an investigation into Delta “to ensure the airline is following the law and taking care of its passengers during continued widespread disruptions.”
“All airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly, and I will make sure that right is upheld,” Buttigieg posted. “While you should first try to resolve issues directly with the airline, we want to hear from passengers who believe that Delta has not complied with USDOT-enforced passenger protection requirements during the recent travel disruptions. We will follow up.”
He directed travelers to the DOT’s online air travel service complaint form.
Delta canceled hundreds more flights Tuesday, the fifth day of its operational meltdown that has stranded hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
By about 5 p.m. Tuesday, Delta had canceled more than 500 flights, including more than 200 to or from its largest hub, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, according to FlightAware.com. It canceled more than 5,000 flights over the previous four days.
Travelers have been sleeping at the Atlanta airport since the meltdown began Friday with a technology outage that affected Microsoft users around the world. About 60% of Delta’s most critical systems to run the airline are Windows-based and were rendered inoperable early Friday morning, according to the airline. The problem came from a faulty security update from a company called CrowdStrike.
The CrowdStrike error “required Delta’s (information technology) teams to manually repair and reboot each of the affected systems, with additional time then needed for applications to synchronize and start communicating with each other,” Delta said in a news release.
But while other companies have mostly recovered, Delta has since had a significant share of its operations hobbled. Some people have waited days to get back home or to their destinations, with more travelers getting swept up in the disruptions as they try to set off for trips.
The DOT said its investigation will evolve as the agency learns more and processes “the high volume of consumer complaints we have already received against Delta.”
Buttigieg said the DOT “will leverage the full extent of our investigative and enforcement power to ensure the rights of Delta’s passengers are upheld.”
Credit: John Spink
Credit: John Spink
Rows of baggage were lined up between Delta’s baggage claim carousels at Hartsfield-Jackson, with so many piling up from passengers whose flights were disrupted, they started to fill an upper-level balcony.
The leader of the Air Line Pilots Association union at Delta sent a letter to members Tuesday, which said: “I know many of you were stranded over the weekend or trying to get to work while flight after flight was canceled.”
“I share your frustration in seeing passengers stranded while we, as crew members, experience the same unacceptable obstacles we face during every (irregular operation) – the inability to contact the Company in any capacity and the feeling that we have been abandoned in the system,” Darren Hartmann, chairman of the Delta pilots’ union, wrote in the letter.
Around Hartsfield-Jackson, many travelers are still trying to fly out.
Harris Foster was trying to fly back from France to Portland, Oregon, with his wife and 11-year-old when his flight from Paris was delayed and his connecting flight to Portland was canceled.
After landing late Monday night, the Delta customer service lines were so long that he didn’t even want to line up in the queue. Instead, “We went outside, got some air, tried to calm down,” Foster said.
Then, after getting in line and waiting until the wee hours of the morning, he was told the next availability to fly from Atlanta to Portland was Thursday. “I don’t want to stay in Georgia until Thursday,” Foster said.
Instead, he was rebooked on flights Tuesday with a connection in Southern California that will require a drive between two different airports to get to Portland. After finally getting the rebooking at around 3 a.m., his wife and daughter slept on an upper level of the domestic terminal atrium while he kept an eye on their belongings.
“It is aggravating,” Foster said.
He said he had previously sung the praises of Delta and Air France, because Delta had more legroom and better amenities and meals than other airlines.
But getting stuck after a flight cancellation and having to sleep overnight at the Atlanta airport is “not an enjoyable experience,” he said. “I’m pretty angry about it.”
Jessica Heskew is supposed to be headed to Albany, Georgia, on a business trip, but also ended up stuck overnight at the Atlanta airport. Her flight from San Diego to Atlanta was delayed while waiting to get enough flight attendants, and she missed her connecting flight as a result.
By the time she got through the line for Delta customer service and booked for a hotel, there were no more shuttles to the hotel, and she didn’t feel comfortable taking an Uber or Lyft in the middle of the night in a city with which she was unfamiliar.
“I just hung out and only got maybe 40 minutes of sleep,” Heskew said. A colleague she is supposed to meet with had his flight canceled and couldn’t get rebooked until Wednesday.
Heskew said she didn’t understand why Delta has had so many more cancellations than other airlines. “You could tell the employees were tired,” she said, “kind of seemed overworked. … There’s a lot of things that are out of our control at this point.”
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