As its recovery from the global CrowdStrike-Microsoft outage delays, Delta cancels hundreds more flights

A massive IT outage caused by a defective update published by CrowdStrike, an Austin-based cybersecurity firm, impacted airlines, trains, banks, and media outlets around the world.

Particularly heavily struck were the airlines; among them were Spirit Airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines, and others that grounded flights and issued delays.

But when it came to flight cancellations on Friday, the day of the event, and in the days that followed, Delta Air Lines was the most severely impacted.

The majority of Delta's cancellations in the United States occur on Monday morning, when the airline had already canceled another 700 flights, or 18% of its mainline operation.

While most other carriers have recovered, Delta's difficulties have continued. By Saturday, according to American Airlines, things were nearly back to normal. According to FlightAware, United Airlines saw more flight disruptions on Sunday than Delta, with 260 flights, or 9% of its schedule, canceled.

Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta, expressed regret to all of the customers whose travel arrangements were impacted by the disruption in a statement on Sunday.

"The technology issue occurred on the busiest travel weekend of the summer, with our booked loads exceeding 90%, limiting our reaccommodation capabilities," he said.

“I want to apologize to every one of you who have been impacted by these events,” Bastian said in a message to customers. “Delta is in the business of connecting the world, and we understand how difficult it can be when your travels are disrupted.”

Delta Air Lines has a number of Microsoft tools that were impacted in the outage, “in particular one of our crew tracking-related tools was affected and unable to effectively process the unprecedented number of changes triggered by the system shutdown,” Bastian said in his note.

The banking and healthcare sectors were also impacted by a malicious software update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike that rendered several Windows-based applications inoperable.