A day after a tech outage disrupted industries worldwide, airlines are digging themselves out from the fallout of thousands of delayed and canceled flights that have left travelers stranded and searching to find a way home over the weekend.
On Saturday morning, delays and cancellations had ebbed, and both domestic and international airlines said they expected to return to near normal operations. But higher than usual cancellation rates are still likely throughout the day, as airlines continue to maneuver planes and their flight crews back into position.
Yesterday’s software outages immobilized airlines, affecting numerous functions, including calculating aircraft weight, checking in and communicating with travelers. The waits stacked up for passengers, and some were left with no option other than to sleep at airports.
Grace Aldrin, 23, said she slept on the floor by baggage claim at La Guardia Airport in New York on Friday night after her United flight to Chicago was delayed overnight. She opened her suitcase and slept on top of her clothes, surrounded by others doing the same.
“They didn’t offer any hotel vouchers — they just told us that we could upload our hotel receipts to United Cares and maybe get a refund,” she said. “I called every hotel I could, and they were all booked.”
At 4 a.m., security officers woke her up, and she trudged back into the terminal, where she eventually got on a standby flight.
Delta Air Lines said in a statement on Saturday that more than 600 of its flights — mostly those departing in the morning and early afternoon — had been canceled, and that passengers could expect additional cancellations as the day progressed. The airline has 4,185 scheduled flights today, 13 percent of which have already been canceled, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics firm. That cancellation rate is far higher than normal.
The weekend, when there are generally several thousand fewer flights in the United States than compared with weekdays, gives airlines a bit more room to recover, said Michael McCormick, a former Federal Aviation Administration control tower operator and an assistant professor of aviation science at Embry-Riddle University in New Jersey.
“From a system perspective, today is running well,” he added. “For passengers, not so much.”
Worldwide, there are around 104,000 flights scheduled today. As of the morning, more than 1,800 of these — or about 1.8 percent — had been canceled, according to Cirium. In the U.S., there are some 24,000 scheduled flights. By noon, delays and cancellations had ticked up at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Delta’s largest hub, where the average delay exceeded an hour and a half, according to data from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Several carriers, including Delta, United Airlines and Spirit Airlines, still have waivers in effect today allowing passengers to rebook flights without any additional fees. However, passengers said these had not made a dent in easing their journeys. Yesterday, airline apps crashed intermittently, phone and chat services were mired in hourslong waits, and hundreds of people waited in lines to speak with gate agents. Today, passengers are hoping their rebooked or delayed flights actually take off.
Andrew Gallagher, a 52-year-old traveling with his partner for “the trip of a lifetime” to several European cities, including a jaunt on the Orient Express, was supposed to be on a United flight to Amsterdam departing from Newark yesterday. There was no alert or notification that the flight was canceled. Then, he said the airline made no attempt to find him an alternative flight, despite his efforts to reach them by phone and by chat through its website. The only notification he said he received from them was that his pre-ordered meal was canceled. He is now booked on a Saturday evening flight to Brussels.
Many travelers also reported that gate agents were not offering any compensation — for accommodations, transport or meals — or instruction in how to receive it — despite the Transportation Department’s direction that airlines provide assistance to travelers with lengthy delays and cancellations related to the outages.
Patrick Flanagan, a 39-year-old cybersecurity worker from Richmond, Va., and his wife were wrapping up their Las Vegas vacation when the outage upended air travel Friday morning. They had already checked their bags and boarded their plane, which was scheduled to depart at about 6 a.m., and waited for roughly two hours on the tarmac before they were told to deplane.
Mr. Flanagan said he spent about 12 hours at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas on Friday, mostly at the Delta counter trying to retrieve his and his wife’s luggage.
At the airport, there were crowds of people at every counter, unsure of how to rebook their flights or get their bags back. “There were probably hundreds of people in every single line to talk to anybody in a Delta uniform,” he said.
“We still don’t have our bags,” Mr. Flanagan said on Saturday morning, from his hotel room in Las Vegas, where he and his wife are staying until they fly out on their rebooked flight on Sunday. “We’re stuck in the clothes that we were wearing to the airport.”
But, he did get a $12 meal voucher, he said.
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