The Atlanta-based carrier has been hit hard by the outage and
has axed more than 6,000 flights since last Friday, leaving
hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded.
Just 1% of flights on Wednesday had been canceled.
Bastian raised some eyebrows, however, for traveling to Paris on
Wednesday for the start of the Summer Olympics later this week
even as the airline grapples with the disruptions.
Delta is the official airline of the U.S. Olympic Team. The
company said he flew on a regularly scheduled Delta flight and
has meetings with leaders and business partners in Paris.
"Ed delayed this long-planned business trip until he was
confident the airline was firmly on the path to recovery," Delta
said in a statement, adding Bastian remained fully engaged with
senior operations leaders.
The carrier canceled just 47 flights, or about 1% of the
scheduled total on Wednesday as of 12:15 p.m. EST, according to
data from FlightAware. Bastian said the cancellations on
Wednesday were expected to be "minimal," with operations
becoming normal on Thursday.
"Our initial efforts to stabilize the operations were difficult
and frustratingly slow and complex," he said in a statement. "We
have made good progress this week and the worst impacts of the
CrowdStrike-caused outage are clearly behind us."
A software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike
triggered system problems for Microsoft customers, including
many airlines, on Friday. But disruptions subsided the next day
at other major U.S. carriers while persisting at Delta.
The U.S. Transportation Department opened an investigation
Tuesday into the Delta disruptions, which affected more than
500,000 passengers and stranded people across the United States.
Many customers complained of waiting hours for assistance while
others were forced to rent cars, drive hundreds of miles to get
to destinations, or wait days for new flights.
Representative Rick Larsen, the top Democrat on the House
Transportation Committee, said he will introduce legislation to
boost the operational resilience of airlines. "The slow response
by some airlines to this meltdown has been unacceptable," Larsen
said.
Senate Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell said she is
concerned Delta is not complying with passenger rights
obligations under a new law.
(Reporting by David Shepardson and Rajesh Kumar Singh;
Additional reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington; Editing by
Angus MacSwan, Kevin Liffey and Nick Zieminski)
[© 2024 Thomson Reuters. All
rights reserved.]
Copyright 2022 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
![](column_spacer.png)
|
|