What It’s Like Traveling on Delta After The Major IT Outage

The last three days have been a nightmare for those traveling Delta and other airlines around the world due to the faulty update from CrowdStrike that took down major systems all around the world.

It seems like Delta has been disproportionately affected due to their more modern IT infrastructure that relied heavily on CrowdStrike’s protection software to keep their network safe.

As such, we’ve seen over 1,000 cancellations a day over the weekend as the airline continues to try to recover and get crews back on rotation. The problem seems to be compounded by gate spacing at various hub airports and the fact it sounds like their crew scheduling application is still being rebuilt by hand.

I’ve been lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to have to travel over the weekend during the recovery. Watching the cancellations I seemed to have dodged a huge bullet. On Thursday I flew up to Minneapolis only a few hours before the outage started, and I didn’t have to leave til Sunday.

The hotel I was staying at by the airport was a zoo by Friday evening with stranded passengers trying to get hotel accommodations. And by Saturday I was seeing on the local news that the Minneapolis airport was wall-to-wall people trying to get help.

When I left Sunday, I was on a Delta Connection flight. It seems as if the Connection carriers recovered a lot quicker than mainline Delta has and I only saw a small delay to Appleton, Wisconsin due to weather. However, my “full” flight was only half full as most people missed their connections.

However, as I type this from the Detroit SkyClub on Monday, things are still needing a lot of improvement. My Delta Connection flight got me to DTW ok but now my mainline Delta flight is delayed for over 3 hours to Atlanta.

I feel lucky at least that I decided to fly through Detroit rather than trying to take the direct Appleton to Atlanta flight, as it got cancelled and some passengers were stuck trying to get rebooked.

I am hoping that my flight to Atlanta will still go. When I was talking to the agent in the SkyClub, she told me the crew was doing a round trip from Atlanta and the flight was already in the air. My fingers are crossed, as I have an important event tomorrow.

My main concern is now Atlanta, as Delta’s biggest hub it also has seen massive surges of people all trying to get out. Like Minneapolis, I’ve seen pictures circulating of every terminal full of people.

The saga will continue as I still try to make it to my destination.

More to come.