Delta on damage control after costly outage

In addition to the canceled flights, Delta had 2,600 other flights delayed after a power outage on Monday at its Atlanta headquarters that led a crash in many computer systems.

The power outage began at 2:30 am (0630 GMT). Of 6,000 scheduled flights to have taken off by that time Delta said it had operated 3,340. Delta runs about 15,000 flights a day along with its alliance partners.

Delta said it was still working to accommodate stranded passengers during the busy summer vacation season.

In July the average Delta flight was 87 percent full, news agency AP reported.

Offering refunds

The scale of the outage amounted to a very costly incident for the company. In a video apology, CEO Ed Bastian offered refunds and $200 in travel vouchers to people whose flights had been canceled or delayed by at least three hours. He said that travelers on some routes could also make a one-time change to the ticket without paying the company's usual change fee of $200 for domestic flights and up to $500 for international flights.

"As I'm sure you can appreciate, it's an all hands on deck effort," he said. "I apologize for the challenges this has created for you with your travel experience."

Delta's flight-status updates weren't working either, which meant that many passengers only learned about the flight problems when they arrived at the airport.

Delta spokesman Trebor Banstetter said there were no indications of hacking.

A spokesman for Georgia Power said the company believes a failure of Delta equipment caused the airline's power outage.

Outages of this kind are not uncommon. In July Southwest Airlines canceled over 2,000 flights over four days after an outage that it blamed on a faulty network router. United Airlines has also suffered a series of massive IT meltdowns after merging with Continental Airlines.

Delta said on Tuesday that over 100 flights would be scratched and 200 others delayed and that the numbers were likely to grow.

"Systems are fully operational and flights resumed hours ago, but delays and cancellations remain as recovery efforts continue," Delta said in a statement late Monday.

Delta said on Wednesday it expects 90 more flight cancellations globally before operations return to normal later in the day. It has had to cancel over 1,700 flights since Monday. The company is predicting 90 flight cancellations for Wednesday, although tracking service FlightStats indicates there are about 150. The company canceled 775 flights on Tuesday and 1,000 on Monday.

jbh/kl (AP, AFP)