The Department of Transportation has just announced a new investigation is now underway into Delta Airlines.
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It’s been almost a week since a global outage involving software updates left millions of travelers stranded with flight cancellations and delays across the country. While the airline companies have worked to restore flights as swiftly as possible, there’s still one major airline that just can’t seem to get back up and running as usual just yet. This ongoing problem has caught the attention of the Department of Transportation due to its high volume of consumer complaints.
According to NPR, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) has launched an investigation to find out why Delta Airlines is now on its 5th consecutive day canceling and delaying flights. In a statement released by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday, the department stressed they have “made clear to Delta that they must take care of their passengers and honor their customer service commitments.” To put a number to the chaos, according to data collected by FlightAware, which is a flight tracking website used by travelers, Delta Airlines had already canceled more than 400 flights and delayed around 860 flights for the day.
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In response to the Department of Transportation’s investigation announcement, it seems Delta is attempting to be cooperative throughout the whole situation. Delta’s statement also went on to note that their teams were working around the clock to resolve the issues and resort to normal operations as quickly as possible.
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So other than extended delays, what else could the Department of Transportation look into within this investigation? Perhaps that answer lies within a letter Delta released this past Sunday. According to NPR, in the letter, Delta Airlines offered travel waivers to customers on flights impacted by the global outage. This waiver option would allow travelers to change itineraries and rebook their flights without any additional fees. This option seems nice enough, however, there are recent law changes that need to be followed now with airline cancellations.
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We’ve talked about the law updates which allow airline travelers the option to request a prompt cash refund for their cancelled flights instead of solely being offered a waiver, voucher, or credit for future or alternate flights. And, as the DOT’s Pete Buttigieg pointed out on X, “timely reimbursements for food and hotel stays to consumers affected by these delays and cancellations, as well as adequate customer service assistance.”
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It will be interesting to hear how the Department of Transportation’s investigation turns out, see how quickly Delta Airlines is able to resume normal flights once again, and looking to see if more options are made available to travelers experiencing delays and cancellations from Delta Airlines.
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we flew Delta last week to Alaska on a mission trip. We left on the 12th. Our flight was delayed 2 hours from Austin. Our flight also had a gate change in Austin that they didn’t even announce, only put it on the app, which I didn’t have. It took us a while to even get checked in because their system couldn’t handle checking in a group of 25. Then when we got to Seattle, we had 10 minutes to get to our next gate, in another terminal. We rushed and then the people at the gate said that we had to board now even though we didn’t have everyone, acting like it was our fault we were late (so Delta didn’t bother to call and delay the next flight even for a few minutes but it was okay for them to be rude and disrespectful and tell us we HAD to board when not all people were there.) Then on the way back (the Friday of the whole Microsoft crash, the 19th) it took us 3 hours to check in. Even while WE were waiting, they were trying to check in another large group that they couldn’t even check in. Understandable that it was a system issue also but when you have an airline whou couldn’t even check in a large group a week before, it shows Delta can’t handle large capacity. We were almost late to our flight but they held it for us, almost making us late to our layover in Minneapolis (our 3 hour layover turned into a 30 minute layover). This is why we fly Southwest. Delta customer service left a very bad taste in my mouth with rude people, and the fact that they can’t handle a large group of people.