U.S. regulators are investigating why Delta Air Lines failed to recover as quickly as other airlines from a global technology breakdown and whether Delta's treatment of passengers stranded by canceled and delayed flights violated federal rules.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday announced the investigation into Delta's response to the outage, which he said has affected more than half a million of the airline's passengers.
A Delta official said the airline expects to return to normal operations by the end of the week.
Delta and its Delta Connection partners canceled more than 500 flights Tuesday. That was down by more than half from Monday but still accounted for nearly two-thirds of all canceled flights in the United States, according to tracking platform FlightAware.
Many airlines were affected when cybersecurity company CrowdStrike sent a faulty update to more than eight million Microsoft computers around the world late last week. Most of them reduced cancellations to roughly normal levels by the end of the weekend.
Atlanta-based Delta and its partners have canceled more than 6,500 flights since Friday, far more than any other airline, according to figures from FlightAware and travel-data provider Cirium.
Buttigieg said his department will investigate 鈥渉ow it could be that days after the other airlines are back to normal, Delta is still canceling hundreds of flights.鈥
At a news conference, Buttigieg said the Transportation Department will also examine Delta's customer service, including 鈥渦nacceptable鈥 lines for customer service and reports that unaccompanied minors were stranded at airports. He said the department has received more than 3,000 complaints about the airline's breakdown.
Delta said it was cooperating with the investigation.
鈥淲e remain entirely focused on restoring our operation after cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike鈥檚 faulty Windows update rendered IT systems across the globe inoperable,鈥 an airline spokesperson said in a statement. 鈥淎cross our operation, Delta teams are working tirelessly to care for and make it right for customers" affected by the disruptions.
John Laughter, Delta鈥檚 chief of operations, said the airline was moving planes, pilots and flight attendants 鈥渢o where they need to be so we can return to normal operations by the end of the week.鈥
The collapse at Delta has been stunning for an outfit that was widely viewed as the best big U.S. airline 鈥 the most profitable before and after the pandemic, and the best-run. In recent years, Delta has almost always ranked near the top among all U.S. carriers for on-time performance.
Delta appears to rely more than other airlines on systems that run on Microsoft Windows. The airline said upward of half its technology systems are Windows-based, including a key tool used to schedule pilots and flight attendants. That system could not keep up with the high number of changes triggered by the outage.
Delta said late Tuesday that a backlog of 鈥渋ssues鈥 in the crew-scheduling system was reduced by 75 per cent over the last 36 hours, and the airline was also making progress in returning lost bags to their owners.
In addition to probing the cause of Delta's collapse, investigators are likely to focus on whether Delta is complying with federal requirements such as offering prompt refunds to passengers whose flights are canceled or significantly delayed. The refunds are supposed to be in the form the customer used to pay for their ticket 鈥 typically a credit card 鈥 and not just a voucher.
In a text provided to The Associated Press, a Delta passenger whose flight was canceled Saturday was told, 鈥淚f you prefer not to rebook your trip, your ticket value will automatically be available as an eCredit that can be used towards a future Delta ticket.鈥
In Washington, lawmakers are beginning to weigh in. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., chair of the Senate committee that oversees airlines, said in a letter to Delta CEO Ed Bastian that she is 鈥渃oncerned鈥 that Delta is not complying with passenger rights contained in a law that Congress passed in May.
鈥淲hile the technology outage was clearly not caused by Delta or any airline, I am nevertheless concerned that Delta is failing to meet the moment and adequately protect the needs of passengers,鈥 Cantwell wrote.
Delta鈥檚 meltdown mirrors that of Southwest Airlines, which canceled nearly 17,000 flights over 15 days in December 2022. A Transportation Department investigation ended with Southwest agreeing to pay a US$35 million fine as part of a $140 million settlement.
Southwest blamed its breakdown on a winter storm, but other airlines recovered in a couple days while Southwest did not. Consumer advocates see the same pattern with Delta this month 鈥 the airline continues to blame the CrowdStrike outage while rivals such as American recovered quickly. Even United Airlines, the second-worst at cancellations, was back on track Monday.
鈥淚t's not about the thing that caused the problem, it's about how you recover from the problem. That's the test of an airline,鈥 said William McGee, a former aircraft dispatcher who is a consumer advocate at the American Economic Liberties Project, a group critical of large corporations.
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A makeshift aquarium that popped up this summer in a puddle beneath a leaky fire hydrant in New York City has been paved over, to the dismay of neighbours who turned the area into a hangout spot and goldfish shrine.
Scotiabank has confirmed outages affecting mobile and online banking services, according to a statement published to its X account.
A New Hampshire woman was sentenced Friday to 53 years to life in prison in the death of her 5-year-old son, who was beaten, starved and exposed to drugs before his 19-pound body was found buried in a Massachusetts park in 2021.
The Yukon government says testing around the gold mine where a containment facility gave way, spilling millions of tonnes of cyanide-laced rock, has found increased levels of mercury, cobalt and cyanide.
It's been a long and emotional journey for Manitoba residential school survivor Susan Caribou. Her niece, Tanya Nepinak, has been missing since September 2011 and has never been found.
The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick (PANB) has uploaded dozens of dashboard camera videos from the 1970s to their YouTube channel.
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A former Alberta teacher has been sentenced to four years for sexually abusing a student.
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday formally apologized to native Americans for the 'sin' of a government-run boarding school system that for decades forcibly separated children from their parents, calling it a 'blot on American history' in his first presidential visit to Indian Country.
Israel pounded Iran with a series of airstrikes early Saturday, saying it was targeting military targets in retaliation for the barrage of ballistic missiles the Islamic Republic fired upon Israel earlier this month. Explosions could be heard in the Iranian capital, Tehran, though there was no immediate information on damage or casualties.
Chinese hackers targeted cellphones used by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, his running mate, JD Vance, and people associated with the Democratic campaign of Kamala Harris, people familiar with the matter said Friday.
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Children who have coughs that go on for weeks may have a type of walking pneumonia that鈥檚 been surging in the U.S. this year, and they may need a different antibiotic regimen to treat it, infectious disease experts say.
The number of people infected by the E. coli outbreak tied to McDonald's Quarter Pounder hamburgers increased to 75 from 49, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday.
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The search for a popular tortoise that went missing from his home in Piedmont is over after his owner said he came home.
Most people have accumulated a pile of data -- selfies, emails, videos and more -- on their social media and digital accounts over their lifetimes. What happens to it when we die?
Phil Lesh, a classically trained violinist and jazz trumpeter who found his true calling reinventing the role of rock bass guitar as a founding member of the Grateful Dead, died Friday at age 84.
A New Mexico judge has upheld her decision to dismiss an involuntary manslaughter charge against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of a Western movie.
Tom Holland is getting ready to don his Spidey suit again. The fourth installment of the blockbuster series has been set for a July 2026 release, Sony Pictures said Friday.
Natural gas producers in Western Canada have white-knuckled it through months of depressed prices, with the expectation that their fortunes will improve when LNG Canada comes online in the middle of next year.
Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem says the world has become more prone to supply shocks which create more risks to inflation, but the central bank is in a better place to deal with them now that inflation is under control.
The former longtime CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch pleaded not guilty Friday to federal sex trafficking and interstate prostitution charges.
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A Toronto man who only recently checked a Lotto 6/49 lottery ticket he bought back in June is now $2.5 million richer.
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A Sherpa teenager who's won mountaineering celebrity as the youngest person ever to summit the world's 14 highest peaks called for Sherpas to be recognized as athletes and expedition leaders as well as porters and guides.
Nikolaj Ehlers scored the winning goal 1:26 into overtime, and the Winnipeg Jets remained unbeaten this season with a 4-3 win over the Seattle Kraken on Thursday night.
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A new resident at a Manitoba animal rescue has waddled her way into people's hearts.
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He is a familiar face to residents of a neighbourhood just west of Roncesvalles Avenue.
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An investigation into the death of a man in Calgary police custody earlier this month has concluded that officers did not contribute to his death and that he was cared for properly.
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Quebec's social services minister says he's outraged by reports that educators at a detention centre for youth in Montreal had sexual relations with minor detainees 鈥 and that one of the employees allegedly had a baby with a teenage resident.
Two minors were in court Friday to face charges after four teenagers were stabbed outside a Montreal high school.
Infectious disease specialists are concerned about a rise in the number of 'walking pneumonia' cases and that the disease is appearing in younger children.
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A second person has been charged in connection with the death of a man in the Kingsway area earlier this year.
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Winnipeg police are looking for a suspect after a woman's dorm room was broken into at the U of M and she was assaulted.
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A Saskatchewan woman is worried her child might die before receiving life-saving surgery and tests as he sits on the province's surgical waitlist.
The Saskatchewan RCMP is releasing the names of two suspects arrested on Thursday for a violent vehicle theft that triggered a widespread police search.
Police have still not confirmed the identity of a body discovered in Prince Albert last week.
The Town of Cochrane plans to roll out its $10-lot program in a month or two.
Two people 鈥 one from Timmins, the other from Kapuskasing -- have been fined more than $7,000 for camping violations, including empty septic tanks directly onto the ground.
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A Harrow school is memorializing two students and their mother, who were tragically killed in June.
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Hulitan Early Years Centre is a brand new, 48-seat childhood learning centre in Colwood. It was built to support Indigenous children throughout the capital region.
More than two years after Alannah Brown and Douglas Barker were found dead north of Penticton, police are asking for help identifying a vehicle they believe was associated with the crime.
Dave Lindsey began growing giant pumpkins to bring a bit of magic to his grandkids' Halloween.
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With Halloween less than a week away, organizations in Lethbridge are preparing to get in on the trick-or-treating fun.
The City of Lethbridge is bringing forward a water conservation policy, the first of its kind for the city.
The union that represents hospital workers across the province is used a symbol from Greek mythology Friday in Espanola to drive home its campaign about the perils of privatization in health care.
CTV's Coats for Kids is nearing the end of its donation window, with the need as strong as it鈥檚 ever been.
The Anishinabek Police Service and the Ontario Provincial Police are investigating the circumstances around a death in Fort William First Nation.
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