I just got word of a systemwide outage reported on Delta Air Lines; and I found this discussion on FlyerTalk which was posted only five minutes ago.
The Federal Aviation Administration of the United States has issued the following advisory in which I just found out after first posting this article that international flights are exempt:
In case the image is unclear, the message reads:
GROUND STOP DAL AND SUB CARRIERS TO DOMESTIC DESTINATIONS. INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT ARE EXEMPT. THIS IS DUE TO AUTOMATION ISSUES WITH DAL. UPDATE AT 0030Z.
The message was amended with the following text:
EXTEND THE GROUND STOP FOR DAL AND SUB CARRIERS TO DOMESTIC DESTINATIONS. INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT ARE EXEMPT. IF THE CREW ADVISES THEY HAVE THER WEIGHT AND BALANCE THEY ARE RELEASED. THIS IS DUE TO AUTOMATION ISSUES WITH DAL. UPDATE AT 0230Z.
The official Internet web site of Delta Air Lines is eerily empty at the time this article was first written, as seen in the image at the top of this article. There is no way to log in or book flight reservations at this time. The official mobile software application program of Delta Air Lines is experiencing similar issues.
Edited at 7:49 in the evening to add that now all that the official Internet web site of Delta Air Lines is displaying at this time is a blank white “page”; and edited as of 8:10 in the evening, the full Internet web site has reappeared.
The official Internet web site for news of Delta Air Lines is operating as normal; but no news has been posted pertaining to the ground stop or outage. Edited as of 8:25 in the evening to provide this update: the following message has just been posted:
Delta teams are expeditiously working to fix a systems outage that has resulted in departure delays for flights on the ground. Flights in the air remain unaffected. Delta apologizes to customers for the inconvenience.
Delta will provide updates as they become available on news.delta.com
Delta Air Lines experienced a systemwide outage this past August, which left the airline scrambling for several days to fully recover; and United Airlines experienced an outage one week ago which affected domestic flights within the continuous 48 United States.
Summary
I was just informed seconds ago that the system was just rebooted; and an update is expected to be available at approximately 8:00 tonight Eastern Standard Time.
All domestic flights — both mainline and Delta Connection — are grounded at this time; but hopefully this issue will be resolved as soon as possible.
If you are a passenger on an international flight operated by Delta Air Lines, you should not be affected — although I would not rule out delays as a result of this outage…
Edited as of 8:16 in the evening: I just received a report that the system is slowly coming back on line; and passengers are starting to check in for their domestic flights as the boarding process has slowly begun sporadically at gates in airports around the United States. The kiosks were inoperable as well; but now they are working.
Hopefully, this outage will be resolved as soon as possible and cause minimal inconvenience at best for all involved.
Meanwhile, I am posting further updates on this situation in this article.
Source: Delta Air Lines.
