Passengers of Delta Air Lines will continue to face flight cancellations and delays on Tuesday morning after a power outage caused the airline's computer system to bog down.
The system failure at the carrier's head office in Atlanta led to the cancellation of more than 870 flights on Monday, stranding tens of thousands of local and international travelers. The entire Delta Air Lines network, from the mobile app and website to the check-in systems at airports, went dead for a total of six hours starting at 2:38 a.m. ET.
And, although flights have resumed and the airline is now fully operational, the cancellations could continue to produce a domino effect. The number of affected passengers could increase, heading into early Tuesday morning, the airline company says.
Delta predicts that more than 100 flights are still expected to be canceled and another 200 delayed in the morning following the system failure, even with recovery efforts now in place and rolling out overnight.
Officials are now investigating what sparked the outage and why network equipment and critical systems failed to switch over to the airline's backup mode. Electric utility company Georgia Power is pointing at an equipment called a "switchgear" bogging down and affecting only Delta, CNN Money reports.
Passengers who are scheduled to fly on Tuesday are advised to check their flight status through the Fly Delta App or on delta.com, where they can also opt to rebook their flights.
Delta is also offering accommodations to some stranded passengers who have been forced to stay overnight, and compensation to those who have been "significantly affected." Still, other options exist for flyers, such as asking for a refund or to be placed on a rival airline.
Ed Bastian, Delta CEO, has expressed his regret over the disruption and assured customers of the company's "all hands on deck effort."
"The Delta team is working very, very hard to restore and get these systems back as quickly as possible," Bastian says in a video posted by the Delta News Hub on Twitter.
At the biggest airports across the country, from San Francisco to New York, thousands of Delta passengers were forced to sleep on the floor, at lounges and near boarding gates, awaiting word on their flight status. Flights coming into the U.S. from London, Rome and Tokyo suffered similar delays, according to passengers who took to Twitter to air their grievances.
Observers estimate Delta, which is the world's second largest airline company with a revenue of $40 billion, will face losses of up to tens of millions of dollars and could take about a week to go back to normal operations.
