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Thursday appears to be the first day since last week\u2019s Crowdstrike outage<\/a> that Delta Air Lines\u2019 operations were completely back to normal. By midday, the Atlanta-based airline and its regional carrier Endeavor Air had just five cancellations, affecting fewer than 1% of flights, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware<\/a>. <\/p>\n But Delta\u2019s return to normal came four full days after most other major carriers had nearly recovered<\/a>. On Monday, while United, JetBlue, and American canceled fewer than 200 flights combined, Delta canceled 1,160 trips, almost 30% percent of its operations that day, according to FlightAware. Since the outage last Friday, the airline has canceled more than 7,000 flights, and on Wednesday, the Department of Transportation estimated that over half a million passengers have been impacted.\u00a0<\/p>\n The issue appears to be related to the airline\u2019s outsized reliance on Microsoft<\/a> Windows, which was taken down by the software outage last week, and which powers about 60% of Delta\u2019s critical applications, according to the airline.\u00a0<\/p>\n That has required manually rebooting each individual system, and giving them time to synchronize with each other\u2014and one system, the scheduling application that coordinates which crews are ready to fly at what airport, appears to be the crux of the meltdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEverything except that critical system is up and running,\u201d chief information officer Rahul Samant said in a video message to employees<\/a>. \u201cAnd that is what we\u2019re working on feverishly.\u201d<\/p>\n The airline did not immediately respond to Fortune\u2019s<\/em> request for comment.<\/p>\n The Delta saga that unfolded over the last week isn\u2019t the first time a major U.S. carrier has had a meltdown related to its crew scheduling system. In 2022, during the peak winter-holiday travel season, Southwest Airlines\u2019 operations were thrown into chaos after storms forced carriers all over the country to cancel flights<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But as other airlines got back on their feet quickly, Southwest\u2019s problems persisted because the airline relied on outdated internal systems to coordinate crew schedules. When the dust settled, the budget carrier had canceled nearly 17,000 flights<\/a> in a little over a week.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kathleen Bangs, a spokesperson for FlightAware and former commercial pilot, explained to Fortune<\/em> that crew scheduling systems are extremely complicated, and having to force a complete reset can throw operations into chaos.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got all your pilots. That\u2019s like one set of chess pieces on a chessboard,\u201d she said. \u201cThen you\u2019ve got all your flight attendants. That\u2019s another set of chess pieces. And then you have the airplanes, and the airports. All of a sudden you get these four groups of chess pieces and they\u2019re all out of whack.\u201d<\/p>\n In the case of Southwest, Bangs said the antiquated crew scheduling system essentially prevented the airline from recovering from the weather disruptions.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOnce it got behind, and it got so behind, it could never catch up, it could never bring the past up to current while still trying to do today and tomorrow\u2019s crew scheduling.\u201d<\/p>\n The similarities between Southwest and Delta aren\u2019t straightforward. Southwest\u2019s initial problem was brought on by an extreme weather event that initially grounded flights, while Delta\u2019s issues were a result of a bug in a software update.\u00a0<\/p>\n But in both cases the debacle seems to have been compounded by heavy traffic. In a recent note, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said the weekend that coincided with the Crowdstrike outage coincided with the airline\u2019s busiest travel weekend of the summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe technology issue occurred on the busiest travel weekend of the summer, with our booked loads exceeding 90%, limiting our reaccommodation capabilities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, if the factors that precipitated the two meltdowns are different, the effects on crew scheduling appear to be similar. According to Bangs, Delta pilots she\u2019s spoken to have said they were in position, ready to fly, but couldn\u2019t get into the scheduling system, or the system wouldn\u2019t recognize them.\u00a0<\/p>\n What\u2019s surprising, she said, is that an episode like this could happen less than two years after the Southwest debacle, which should have prompted other carriers to take a closer look at their own systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAfter what happened with Southwest,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd after everybody in the industry hearing for so long, especially from Southwest flight crews, who were very vocal about this, about their frustration with the system, what\u2019s shocking is that it could happen again so soon.\u201d<\/p>\n The fact that another meltdown could happen at Delta, widely regarded as an industry leader, adds to the surprise. The carrier was ranked the top airline for customer satisfaction<\/a> in 2024, as well as the 11th most admired company in the world by Fortune<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, the Department of Transportation opened an investigation into Delta to \u201censure the airline is following the law and taking care of its passengers during continued widespread disruptions,\u201d according to a post on X<\/a> by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.\u00a0<\/p>\n .@USDOT<\/a> has opened an investigation into Delta Air Lines to ensure the airline is following the law and taking care of its passengers during continued widespread disruptions.<\/p>\n All airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly, and I will make sure that right is upheld.<\/p>\n \u2014 Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) July 23, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The DOT opened an investigation into Southwest following the 2022 meltdown as well. That inquiry resulted in Southwest having to pay a $140 million civil penalty, the largest the department has ever levied for consumer protection violations<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is about the entire industry, sending a signal that you should not be cutting corners,\u201d Buttigieg said on NPR at the time<\/a>. \u201cBecause if you fail your passengers, we will hold you accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n Bangs said she hopes what happened over the past week will force everyone in the industry to look closer at their own operations, or even run stress tests on their systems to see how they hold up in situations like last Friday.<\/p>\n \u201cHopefully other airlines are saying: \u2018Okay, now we really need to pay attention, because now it\u2019s happened twice, and nobody expected this from Delta.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In the meantime, Bangs told Fortune<\/em> that the best course of action for Delta was to \u201cgive until it hurts\u201d\u2014that is, to get ahead on compensating passengers for their troubles, something the airline has already started doing. On Wednesday, Delta said it would reimburse passengers whose flights were canceled for \u201calternative flights,<\/a>\u201d or flights booked on other airlines<\/p>\n \u201cNothing says I\u2019m sorry like lots of free miles in your Delta SkyMiles account or free travel vouchers,\u201d Bangs said.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Southwest, the 2022 disaster has continued to haunt the company. In June, activist investor Elliott Management acquired an 11% stake in the airline and has begun calling for a change in the company\u2019s leadership<\/a>. In its reasoning for an overhaul<\/a>, the hedge fund specifically mentioned the 2022 meltdown, as well as a more-than 50% loss in market value in three years. Southwest in turn adopted a shareholder rights plan<\/a>\u2014 known as a poison pill\u2014earlier this month that would discourage Elliot from buying up more shares of the company.<\/p>\n Despite Southwest\u2019s poor position in the current market, last week\u2019s outage did not pile onto its troubles. On Monday, FlightAware showed that less than 1% of its flights were canceled. On Thursday, the low-cost carrier also announced it would begin offering assigned seats<\/a>, a massive shakeup to its business model, in an effort to boost its competitiveness.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been consistently investing across the airline to modernize our core operation technology, bringing redundancies that helped us navigate around some vendors\u2019 temporary issues,\u201d Chris Perry, a Southwest spokesperson, told CNN<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n