Delta cancellations spill into Wednesday

Delta Air Lines passengers are still facing delays and flight cancellations Wednesday after the airline’s massive computer outage earlier in the week.

Delta officials made the decision Tuesday night to cancel at least another 90 flights scheduled for Wednesday morning.

Delta is offering $200 travel vouchers to customers whose flights have been delayed more than three hours or canceled through 12 p.m. Wednesday. On Monday, when the outage first hit, the airline grounded more than 1,000 flights and delayed another 3,000.

The company said Delta employees worldwide are doing everything possible to return the operation to normal and get customers to their destinations. Not only was there lingering slowness in Delta’s computer system, he said, but merely restoring pilot and crew schedules in compliance with federal rules would probably take a considerable amount of time. As of 7 p.m. EST that night, Delta said it had operated 3,340 of its almost 6,000 scheduled flights for the day. About 800 more flights were scrapped Tuesday. As of 11 p.m. EST, Tuesday Aug. 9, Delta reported almost 775 flight cancellations; over 2,400 flights had departed by Tuesday evening.

“Delta officials anticipate returning to a normal operation by mid-to-late afternoon Wednesday following an outage Monday that disrupted the airline’s flight schedule, though a chance of scattered thunderstorms expected in the eastern USA may have the potential [to] slow the recovery”, the airline said in an online statement. “Other systems did”, West said. Power was restored but some systems and network equipment didn’t switch to backups.

Delta is the No. 2 carrier at Mitchell International, carrying about 25% of the passenger traffic at the airport.

In the congested concourses overnight, she said, where thousands of travelers crowded into gate areas and walkways and stood in long lines trying to get information about their flights, “they had a really long wait, just for a simple question like, ‘What do I do next?'”

Delta said it contacted some of its most frequent fliers who would be stuck in the disruption and offered them seats on its Delta Private Jets subsidiary to finish their journey.

Delta extended until Wednesday a travel-waiver policy to help stranded passengers rearrange their travel plans.