Delta’s Outage Was on Monday – Why Is My Wednesday Flight Affected?

Because airlines are so tightly scheduled, cancellations and delays have a major impact. One of the biggest challenges an airline faces when recovering from an outage is that the planes and flight crews are not in the right place. If your flight from Dulles is cancelled, the airport where it was supposed to land is now missing a plane so the outbound flight using that aircraft can’t fly either and so on, with a ripple affect through the entire system. It takes days for an airline to re-work flight schedules to get planes and crews to where they need to be to start working the normal schedule again keeping in mind the strict rules governing crew work/rest hours. The airline must accomplish this while also getting passengers where they need to go. The latter is especially difficult during the peak summer travel season when there are few extra seats available to accommodate the displaced passengers. To clear the backlog faster airlines will book the stranded passengers on other airlines with whom they have cooperative agreements. Many newer or low cost airlines so not participate in these agreements. In Delta’s case, they have no such agreement with American either which further limits their options.