Delta Air systems outage forces worldwide flight cancellations, delays

Delta Air Lines canceled hundreds of flights and delayed many others on Monday after an outage hit its computer systems, grounding planes and stranding passengers of one of the world's largest carriers at airports around the globe.

Atlanta-based Delta, the second-largest U.S. airline by passenger traffic, said it had canceled 451 flights after a power outage that began around 2:30 a.m. EDT in Atlanta. Flights gradually resumed about six hours later.

The disruption could deal a blow to the reputation of Delta, which for months canceled far fewer flights than rivals and boasted of its successes to corporate and leisure customers to win their loyalty.

Delta said it was investigating the cause of the "system-wide outage."

The problems also meant flight information was not showing correctly on Delta's website or on airport information boards, and this could also take time to resolve, the carrier said.

Delta said it will grant full refunds and waive change fees for passengers whose flights were canceled or significantly delayed.

Operations manager Terri Tibbe at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport said Delta's local backlog of departures was cleared by midmorning.

"There is not a Delta jet parked at our terminal," Tibbe said. "It sounds like the last one took off at about 7:45 (a.m.)."

A Delta representative in Atlanta said the airline couldn't immediately provide information on the status of flights into or out of Anchorage or any other individual airport.

The problems arose after a switchgear, which helps control and switch power flows like a circuit breaker in a home, malfunctioned for reasons that were not immediately clear, said Georgia Power spokesman John Kraft.

The utility, which provides electricity to most counties in Georgia, earlier sent a team to investigate, Kraft said. The problem has not affected other Georgia Power customers, he said.

The carrier was probably running a routine test of its backup power supplies when the switchgear failed and locked Delta out of its reserve generators as well as from Georgia Power, industry analyst and former airline executive Robert Mann said. That would result in a shutdown of Delta's data center, which controls bookings, flight operations and other critical systems, he said.

A Delta spokeswoman declined to comment when asked about backup systems.

The glitch follows several high-profile computer problems faced by U.S. airlines in the past year.

Budget carrier Southwest Airlines had to halt departures last month after a technical outage, while American Airlines had to suspend flights from three of its hubs last September after technical problems.

Industry consultants say airlines face an increasing risk from computer disruptions as they automate more of their operations, distribute boarding passes on smartphones and fit their planes with Wi-Fi.

(Alaska Dispatch News reporter Chris Klint contributed to this report.)