SALT LAKE CITY — Travelers are stranded at airports on what is now day five of a major transportation mess triggered by a computer outage.
Thousands of flights have been canceled across the country following the CrowdStrike tech outage and Delta, which has a major hub in the Twin Cities, is responsible for two-thirds of cancellations nationwide. Those cancellations have left scores of travelers stranded across the country, and KARE 11's Morgan Wolfe is one of them.
Wolfe took a vacation to Glacier National Park in Montana. When it came time to return home her first flight was delayed, and then her connecting flight to MSP Airport was canceled.
Morgan said she tried to rebook on her Delta app, but the soonest flight available was Tuesday night. Things got worse when she tried to retrieve her suitcase at the airport in Salt Lake City, Utah.
"So I after waiting for two hours to talk to Delta agent, they closed the stand down we were told to come down to put in a request to get our bags," she said. "We've been here for two hours and it's a half-hour past midnight. I'm so tired."
Thrifty Traveler's Kyle Potter is not optimistic about Delta getting their mess straight before Friday.
"This is really ugly and this is about as bad as it gets... and you know, a serious black eye for an airline like Delta that has tried to be the premium airline of the United States and has really prided itself on its reliability," he said. "Here they are just absolutely falling apart."
Delta canceled more than 700 flights on Monday, bringing its total since the outage started Friday to more than 5,500 cancellations. That's according to travel-data provider Cirium. Delta's woeful performance is drawing unwanted attention from the federal government. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he spoke to Delta CEO Ed Bastian about the cancellations, adding that he expects Delta to issue quick refunds and to pay for hotels and meals for customers who are stranded by the ongoing cancellations.
Bastian, the Delta CEO, said in a message to customers Sunday that the airline was continuing to restore operations that were disrupted. One of the tools Delta uses to track crews was affected and could not process the high number of changes triggered by the outage.
“The technology issue occurred on the busiest travel weekend of the summer, with our booked loads exceeding 90%, limiting our re-accommodation capabilities,” Bastian wrote. Loads are the percentage of sold seats on each flight.
“It is going to take another couple of days before we are in a position to say that ... the worst is clearly behind us," Bastian added. “Today will be a better day than yesterday, and hopefully Tuesday and Wednesday will be that much better again.”
Other carriers appeared to be returning to nearly normal levels of service disruptions, intensifying the glare on Delta’s relatively weaker response to the outage that hit airlines, hospitals and businesses around the world.
Since Minnesota is a Delta hub, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has the second most cancelations and delays in the U.S., trailing only Atlanta.
"Some of their scheduling software basically just broke and so my understanding is that Delta has been trying to do this manually but you know when you're flying thousands of flight a day, you just can't keep up," Potter said.
Tensions are running high between the airline and its customers - Wolfe said she has seen customers berate Delta employees, hotels in some cities are fully booked and no one knows when they're getting home.
"I wouldn't feel good about flying Delta on Friday," Potter said. "This is going to take some serious, serious time for the airline to reset and get caught up."