Delta: 'Technical issue' briefly grounds flights nationwide

Ben Mutzabaugh USA TODAY

Published 11:51 AM EDT Sep 26, 2018

Delta Air Lines' flights schedules had largely returned to normal Wednesday, a day after a "technical issue" forced the carrier to briefly ground all of its domestic flights Tuesday.

Only three of the carrier's "mainline" flights had been canceled as of 11:15 a.m. ET while about 110 combined departures and arrivals were delayed, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. The delays accounted for just about 3% of Delta's entire daily schedule.

That's a relatively low number, but is above-normal for Delta, which is consistently one of the USA's most on-time carriers.

But many of the airline's Tuesday flights were affected after a systems outage forced the Delta to hold its domestic flights on the ground across the nation for about an hour Tuesday. The "ground stop" applied only to domestic flights and flights already in the air continued on to their destinations as normal. Delta said the stop applied only to its "mainline" flights and not to the hundreds operated by its regional affiliates that fly smaller jets.

FlightAware counted only three cancellations on Delta's mainline operations Tuesday, but more than 670 flights were delayed. That number meant about one out of every five Delta flights was late by Tuesday evening.

After customers began complaining of delays on social media shortly before 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Delta acknowledged a technical glitch.

By 9:28 p.m. ET, Delta said in said in an update that the issue had been resolved.

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"Delta teams have restored all IT systems after a technology issue briefly affected some of our systems this evening," Delta's statement said. "All groundstops have been lifted."

Delta advised customers flying on Wednesday to check ahead on the status of their flights, but said it did expect not major disruptions.

"Additional flight delays and the impact on Wednesday morning’s schedule are expected to be minimal. Delta apologizes to its customers for this inconvenience," the airline said.

Delta has not specified a cause of the outage, saying only that its teams "are investigating the root cause of the technology issue."

The first complaints about technical problems began surfacing on social media shortly before 8 p.m. ET.

During the hour or so that flights were being held, Delta faced queries from delayed passengers about the problem. In response, Delta confirmed the technical issues were systemwide, with domestic flights on a "ground stop."

International flights were not affected, nor were flights on regional affiliates.

Prior to the resolution, Delta confirmed the incident in a statement posted to its website.

"Delta IT teams are working diligently to address a technology issue impacting some of our systems," the company said. "We have issued a Delta groundstop as we work to bring systems back up as quickly as possible. There has been no disruption or safety issue with any Delta flight currently in the air. We apologize to all customers for this inconvenience. "

Contributing: Dustin Barnes of The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.

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