Delta’s flight delays and cancellations prompt Dept. of Transportation investigation : NPR

Vacationers, you should definitely pack some persistence. Chaos continues to be underway with Delta Air Traces, because the airline has entered its fifth day of flight cancellations and delays following Friday’s world software program outage.

And whereas the Atlanta-based provider continues to be attempting to get operations so as, the U.S. Division of Transportation has opened an investigation into the current flight disruptions, citing “the excessive quantity of shopper complaints” the division has acquired in opposition to Delta.

“Now we have made clear to Delta that they have to deal with their passengers and honor their customer support commitments,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg mentioned in an announcement Tuesday.

“This isn’t simply the suitable factor to do, it’s the legislation, and our division will leverage the complete extent of our investigative and enforcement energy to make sure the rights of Delta’s passengers are upheld,” he added.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Delta had canceled greater than 400 flights and delayed roughly 860 flights for the day, in response to flight monitoring web site FlightAware.

In an announcement to NPR, Delta Air Traces acknowledged the Division of Transportation’s discover of the investigation and mentioned it’s “absolutely cooperating” with the division.

“We stay totally centered on restoring our operation after cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike’s defective Home windows replace rendered IT methods throughout the globe inoperable,” the airline mentioned in its assertion, including that groups are consistently working to get its operations again to regular.

On Monday, Delta Air Traces CEO Ed Bastian mentioned that the airline has been working to revive the software program that tracks and schedules its flight crews. Nevertheless, he famous that it could take a couple of days to totally restore the airline’s operations.

“We’ve received everybody across the firm working across the clock to get this operation the place it must be,” Bastian mentioned within the assertion.

In a public letter Sunday, Delta provided journey waivers to clients on flights impacted by the outage, permitting them to alter itineraries and rebook their flights with none added charges. However in a publish on X, Buttigieg mentioned that below new federal rules, clients should not obligated to just accept the journey credit score provided to rebook flights however are entitled to a immediate money refund.

“Delta should present immediate refunds to shoppers who select to not take rebooking, free rebooking for individuals who do, and well timed reimbursements for meals and lodge stays to shoppers affected by these delays and cancellations, in addition to ample customer support help,” he wrote.

Hundreds of thousands of Microsoft customers worldwide had been knocked offline following a flawed software program replace from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity group. CrowdStrike mentioned the issue was not a cyberattack however a “software program glitch.” After figuring out the difficulty, the corporate mentioned it withdrew the “problematic channel file” that affected clients’ methods.

Delta’s technical points are comparable to people who occurred with Southwest Airways through the 2022 vacation journey season. The Dallas-based airline canceled 1000’s of flights and left hundreds of thousands of vacationers stranded.

Following the incident, the U.S. Transportation Division ordered Southwest to pay $140 million in a civil penalty, which was by far the biggest the DOT has ever levied for shoppers, the division mentioned in an announcement saying the penalty.