Delta Air Lines Flight Disruptions Prompt Investigation by Department of Transportation

The Department of Transporation on Tuesday announced it was launching an investigation over flight disruptions at Delta Air Lines after a global IT outage forced the airline to cancel a significant number of flights across the United States since Friday.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the investigation will aim to “ensure the airline is following the law and taking care of its passengers during continued widespread disruptions,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg posted on X.

“All airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly, and I will make sure that right is upheld,” he said.

Delta on Tuesday 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,” the company told ABC News and The Hill in a statement.

Teams across Delta operations 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,” the statement read.

The disruptions came as US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said a “significant number” of 8.5 million Windows devices – one per cent of the global total – crashed due to a defective software update resulting in thousands of cancelled flights since Friday.

The bulk of the problems affected passengers booked on Delta flights. Upward half of Delta’s IT systems worldwide are Windows based with IT teams manually having had to repair and reboot each of the affected systems, the airline said Monday.

The airline cancelled more than 400 flights by Tuesday morning, the most of any major air carrier with 55 flights cancelled as the second highest.

On Friday, CrowdStrike quickly stated that the mass outage — caused by a defective content update for its Falcon driver software – had affected air transportation, hospitals, financial systems and other government entities worldwide, including 911 services.

By Monday, FlightAware reported 2 016 cancellations in and out of the United States with 9 382 delays later in the day. But days after the mass outage of systems using Windows devices, most returned to normal, including airlines – with the exception of Delta Air Lines.

The cancellations represented 32 per cent of flights Friday and 24 per cent Monday. The carrier said the issue occurred “on the busiest travel weekend of the summer” with booked loads exceeding 90%.