Delta Air Lines faced significant operational challenges on Monday, canceling 1,153 flights or 29% of its operations and delaying another 45%. This followed a Sunday where 36% of flights were canceled and 44% delayed. By early Tuesday morning, over 10% of the day's flights had already been canceled.
The situation at Atlanta airport was particularly dire, with crowded terminals, long lines for customer service, and limited options for rental cars and hotels. Cole T. Lyle tweeted, "Mothers w/ small children on the floor in the terminal. Line for customer service is 1/2 mile long. No rental cars. Few hotel options. People’ve been stuck here 3 days."
Delta's CEO and Chief Information Officer informed employees that only crew tracking systems were malfunctioning and that they were running multiple systems in parallel to manage the situation. However, another major system failure occurred on Monday night, as reported by aviation watchdog JonNYC.