Delta Cancels More Flights as Woes Drag on

Delta's travails, and those of its customers, move into day two with the airline canceling nearly 250 flights, reports the AP. The cancellations Tuesday follow about 1,000 canceled flights Monday and almost 3,000 delayed flights after an outage at its Atlanta headquarters caused a global systems failure. The airline was back online after a number of hours, but the outages were so widespread that it is still dealing with the ripple effects. More than 1,000 people spent the night at an airport outside Tokyo because of the shutdown and, while flights were resuming Tuesday, a Delta rep says more delays are expected. The airline has posted a video apology by CEO Ed Bastian and is offering refunds and $200 in travel vouchers to people whose flights were canceled or delayed at least three hours.

Delta's challenge on Tuesday will be to find enough seats on planes to accommodate the tens of thousands of passengers whose flights were scrubbed. Last month, the average Delta flight was 87% full. For passengers, hardship from the early Monday morning meltdown was compounded by the fact that Delta's flight-status updates weren't working either, so many passengers only learned about the flight problems when they arrived at the airport. A Delta rep says some key systems and network equipment did not switch over to backup systems after a power outage. He says the airline's investigation into the cause of the outage is continuing but there are no indications of hacking. A rep for Georgia Power says the company believes a failure of Delta equipment caused the outage. (More Delta Air Lines stories.)