I'm glad I don't work for Delta Airlines's IT department

[Bob Juch]

They're blaming a power failure for their entire system being down. Hundreds of flights have been canceled.

Someone allowed for a single point of failure.

A friend from when I worked in South Carolina the first time now works for them.

[SpacemanSpiff]

They're blaming a power failure for their entire system being down. Hundreds of flights have been canceled.

Someone allowed for a single point of failure.

A friend from when I worked in South Carolina the first time now works for them.

I notice it took 12 hours for them to come up with a "power failure in Atlanta" excuse. This hit me for two reasons: (a) Generators, anyone? For a frickin' data center?!?!? and (b) It takes you 12 hours to know (or admit to) a power outage?

Somehow I think that's not all of it; I call shenanigans!

[Bob Juch]

They're blaming a power failure for their entire system being down. Hundreds of flights have been canceled.

Someone allowed for a single point of failure.

A friend from when I worked in South Carolina the first time now works for them.

I notice it took 12 hours for them to come up with a "power failure in Atlanta" excuse. This hit me for two reasons: (a) Generators, anyone? For a frickin' data center?!?!? and (b) It takes you 12 hours to know (or admit to) a power outage?

Somehow I think that's not all of it; I call shenanigans!

It's probably a bad software update that didn't have an easy backout.

[Bob Juch]

A spokesman for Georgia Power told The Associated Press that the company believes a failure of Delta equipment caused the airline's power outage. He said no other customers lost power.

[Bob Juch]

Delta continues to have problems. Many flights have been delayed or canceled today.

[geoffil]

IMHO it is made worse by offshoring IT consultants. The culture of not admitting errors to save face, no depth of experience and no allegiance to the company all make a sense of urgency non existent

[Bob Juch]

IMHO it is made worse by offshoring IT consultants. The culture of not admitting errors to save face, no depth of experience and no allegiance to the company all make a sense of urgency nonexistent

I agree but we don't know if that's the case here.

[Bob Juch]

Tuesday, August 09, 2016 06:26AM
NEW YORK -- Delta Air Lines will be handing out refunds and travel vouchers as penance for the latest computer outage to knock a major airline off stride.

Delta canceled about 1,000 flights and had 2,900 others delayed, some for hours, after a power outage Monday at its Atlanta headquarters caused many computer systems to crash.

The computer systems were working again a few hours later but Delta said it was still working to accommodate stranded passengers.

Its challenge Tuesday will be to find enough seats on planes during the busy summer vacation season to accommodate the tens of thousands of passengers whose flights were scrubbed. Last month, the average Delta flight was 87 percent full.

On its website, Delta said it is canceling nearly 250 flights Tuesday morning as it works to reset the operation and get personnel in place to take care of customers.

"We were able to bring our systems back on line and resume flights within a few hours yesterday but we are still operating in recovery mode," said Dave Holtz, S.V.P. - Operations and Customer Center.

For passengers, hardship from the early morning meltdown was compounded by the fact that Delta's flight-status updates weren't working either. Instead of being able to stay home, many passengers only learned about the flight problems when they arrived at the airport.

"By the time I showed up at the gate the employees were already disgruntled, and it was really difficult to get anybody to speak to me or get any information," said Ashley Roache, whose flight from Lexington, Kentucky, to New York's LaGuardia Airport was delayed. "The company could have done a better job of explaining ... what was happening."

Delta spokesman Trebor Banstetter said that after a power outage at the company's Atlanta headquarters, some key systems and network equipment did not switch over to backup systems. He said the airline's investigation into the cause of the outage was continuing but said there were no indications of hacking.

A spokesman for Georgia Power said that the company believes a failure of Delta equipment caused the airline's power outage. He said no other customers lost power. Delta declined to comment on the power company's report.

Flights that were already in the air when the outage occurred continued to their destinations, but flights on the ground remained there.

At 1:45 a.m. Eastern time, Delta said it had canceled about 1,000 flights, and tracking service FlightStats Inc. counted almost 2,900 delayed flights since Monday.

Delta ranks as the third-largest in the world by number of passengers carried, with 138.8 million travelers last year, according to industry group IATA. It was narrowly beaten only by American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, with all of them flying mostly within the United States.

Airlines depend on huge, overlapping and complicated systems to operate flights, schedule crews and run ticketing, boarding, airport kiosks, websites and mobile phone apps. Even brief outages can snarl traffic and cause long delays.

That has afflicted airlines in the U.S. and abroad.

On Monday in Richmond, Virginia, Delta gate agents were writing out boarding passes by hand. In Tokyo, a dot-matrix printer was resurrected to keep track of passengers on a flight to Shanghai.

AP radio correspondent Julie Walker in New York, Bree Fowler in Las Vegas, Joseph Pisani in New York, and Jeff Martin in Atlanta contributed to this report.

[Vandal]

Delta has found the problem: