By David Shepardson and Rajesh Kumar Singh
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said the company is making progress in restoring services after a global computer outage and will resume normal operations on Thursday.
The Atlanta-based airline has been hit hard by the outage, cancelling more than 6,000 flights since last Friday, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers.
Only 1% of flights were cancelled on Wednesday.
But Bastian raised some eyebrows by flying to Paris on Wednesday for the opening of the Summer Olympics later this week even as the airline is experiencing disruptions.
Delta is the official airline of the U.S. Olympic team. The company said Trump flew on a regular Delta flight and held meetings with leaders and business partners in Paris.
“Ed postponed his long-planned business trip until he was confident the airline was firmly on the path to recovery,” Delta said in a statement, adding that Bastian remained in full contact with senior operational leaders.
According to data from FlightAware, the airline had canceled just 47 flights, or about 1% of its total scheduled flights on Wednesday as of 12:15 p.m. ET. Bastian said cancellations on Wednesday were expected to be “minimal,” with operations returning to normal on Thursday.
“Our initial efforts to stabilize operations were difficult, slow, and frustratingly complex,” he said in a statement. “We have made good progress this week, and it is clear that the worst of the outage caused by CrowdStrike is over.”
A software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: ) caused system problems for Microsoft (NASDAQ: ) customers including several airlines on Friday. But the disruptions subsided the next day at other major U.S. carriers while they persisted at Delta.
The US Department of Transportation opened an investigation Tuesday into Delta Air Lines disruptions that affected more than 500,000 passengers and stranded people across the United States.
Many customers complained of waiting hours for assistance, while others had to rent cars, drive hundreds of miles to reach their destinations, or wait days for new flights.
Rep. Rick Larsen, the top Democrat on the House Transportation Committee, said he would introduce a bill to boost airline operational resilience. “The slow response by some airlines to this collapse is unacceptable,” Larsen said.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell said she was concerned Delta was not complying with its obligations regarding passenger rights under a new law.
