Delta Air Lines canceled around 300 hundred flights Monday after its computer systems crashed, stranding thousands of passengers on a busy travel day.
The flight tracking site FlightStats Inc. said that more than 1,000 flights were delayed.
About six hours into the outage, the airline said that limited flights had resumed but that there were ongoing delays and cancelations.
Many passengers were frustrated that they received no notice of the problems, discovering that they were stranded only after making it through security and seeing other passengers sleeping on the floor.
It was unclear if the airline was even able to communicate due to its technical issues, and Delta said that there may be a lag issuing accurate flight status on the company website because of the outage.
A power outage at an Atlanta facility early Monday initiated a cascading meltdown, according to the airline, which is also based in Atlanta.
Flights that were already in the air when the outage occurred continued to their destinations, but flights on the ground remained there. Over the next several hours, only a handful of flights took off instead of the hundreds that is more typical for a Monday morning, according to flight-tracking services.
Airlines depend on huge, overlapping and complicated technology systems to operate flights, schedule crews and run ticketing, boarding, airport kiosks, websites and mobile phone apps. Even brief outages can snarl traffic and cause long delays.
A spokesman for Georgia Power told The Associated Press that the company believes failure of Delta equipment caused the airline's power outage. He said no other customers lost power.
A Delta spokesman said he had no information on the report.
In Columbus, Chris Sarjeant was one of thousands of Delta passengers that showed up to the airport this morning, only to sit and wait. “Between the time I got in the car and got to the airport the flight delayed 2 and a half hours,” Sarjeant said.
Shaina McGordon just wanted to get back to her family in Atlanta. “I'm anxious because I want to get home,” McGordon said.
At John Glenn Columbus International Airport, fliers showed up not knowing about the issue.
“It would have been great to know, I could have gotten more sleep. Now I have to figure out how I'm going to get to Atlanta right now,” said Jeremy Westbrook.
Travelers were even more frustrated when they looked up at the boards to check their flight status. For several hours on Monday morning all the flights said “on time”, which they weren't.
“It said 'on time' and I saw the camera crew and thought 'what's up?' So I have no idea what's going on,” added Westbrook.
“I do this a lot so I know this happens but the flip side is I could have sat at home and had a cup of coffee had I known earlier that things were delayed,” Sarjeant said.
Delta eventually updated the boards and by mid-morning flights started to take off from Columbus. But the problem created a ripple effect of delays and missed connections through the afternoon.
A frustrating situation for most travelers, but not Chris Sarjeant who was glad he's only traveling for work to Wichita. “If I was traveling somewhere on vacation, I would have been more upset about it. It happens."
The company said travelers will be entitled to a refund if the flight is canceled or significantly delayed. Travelers on some routes can also make a one-time change to the ticket free of charge.
Computer outages are a periodic plague for airlines. Last month, Southwest Airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights over several days after an outage that it blamed on a faulty network router. Unions called for the airline to replace the CEO, but the board gave him a vote of confidence.
Investors shrugged off Delta's IT mishap. In morning trading, shares of Delta Air Lines Inc. rose 43 cents, to $38.10.