HOUSTON — U.S. regulators are investigating how Delta Air Lines is treating passengers affected by thousands of canceled and delayed flights as the airline struggles to recover from a global technology meltdown.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced the Delta investigation on the X social media platform Tuesday “to ensure the airline is following the law and taking care of its passengers during continued widespread disruptions.”
“All airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly, and I will make sure that right is upheld,” Buttigieg said.
The outage began Thursday night into Friday morning, after a faulty software upgrade from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike to more than 8 million Microsoft computers around the world.
Delta has canceled more than 6,600 flights since the outage started, far more than any other airline, according to figures from FlightAware and travel-data provider Cirium.
Houstonian Eric Daniels is one of the tens of thousands of passengers left stranded. He's been trying for five days to get home to Houston from Los Angeles.
"We've been here since Friday. The rooms are $300 a night because nobody wants to go down because of this incident," Daniels told CBS News. "Everybody done raise the prices on the room. The rental cars are all sold out. So we are back and forth and Delta is not telling you anything and they're not helping you any kind of way."
Other passengers complained that Delta hadn't returned their checked luggage leaving some without medications and other important items.
Delta said it was cooperating with the investigation.
“We remain entirely focused on restoring our operation after cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike’s faulty Windows update rendered IT systems across the globe inoperable,” an airline spokesperson said in a statement. "Across our operation, Delta teams are working tirelessly to care for and make it right for customers impacted by delays and cancellations as we work to restore the reliable, on-time service they have come to expect from Delta.”
Delta has said upward of half its technology systems run on Microsoft Windows, including a tool the airline uses to schedule pilots and flight attendants. The systems could not keep up with the high number of changes triggered by the outage.
The collapse at Delta is stunning for an outfit that was widely viewed as the best big U.S. airline – the most profitable before and after the pandemic, and the best-run operation. Delta has almost always ranked near the top among all U.S. carriers for on-time performance.
The Transportation Department said it launched the investigation after seeing Delta's continued widespread flight disruptions “and reports of concerning customer service failures.”