Delta Air Lines faces prolonged recovery after major system failure

Aviation watchdog JonNYC leaked an internal transcript revealing details shared with employees. CEO Ed Bastian expressed gratitude towards employees for their efforts amidst the crisis but appeared dismissive of Transportation Secretary Buttigieg’s calls for honoring customer obligations. Bastian stated, “I said,, you do not need to remind me, I know, because we do our very best, particularly in tough times taking care of customers.”

Bastian acknowledged that recovery would take several days: “hopefully Tuesday and Wednesday will be that much better again and get ready for a real good weekend.” However, he advised against flying with Delta this week.

Chief Information Officer Rahim unveiled that the airline faced issues with over 1,500 key systems and that "60% of our most critical applications that run the airline are Microsoft Windows-based." Although these systems were restored by early Friday morning in Atlanta, data transfer overloads persisted. Two critical systems continued to malfunction: one managing operations at Atlanta’s hub and another tracking crew assignments.

Delta struggled to track crew members or assign them to flights effectively. Efforts included running five parallel systems to synchronize operations but faced difficulties resyncing schedules dynamically.

The CIO anticipates improvements by week's end as they continue working on resolving these issues comprehensively.

The broader impact includes questions about whether the departure of former operations chief Gil West during the pandemic or recent IT layoffs may have contributed to these prolonged recovery challenges.