For all the hacking conspiracy theorists who think this could have been the result of a coordinated plot by China - why would the PRC government attack its closest foreign airline partner? The vast majority of PRC airlines except Air China and Hainan are partnered exclusively with Delta. There's nothing to be gained - DL is already freely sharing information, investment and expertise with MU.

I did try that earlier. He couldn't book it himself, he had to go through Delta but had a special travel agent number. He waited five minutes and checked back with me, I told him I'd hold on longer but at ten minutes I really needed to get back in my meeting and told him I'd just try later.

If I don't get a call back tonight before they close I'll try the travel agent route, but with my luck, Delta will call me back while I'm on the phone with the travel agent!

I highly recommend a sure thing with Southwest. Flights are being canceled left and right out of ATL. I was sitting on 2 flights last night only to be told AFTER AN HOUR that it was canceled.

slashdot thread:

https://it.slashdot.org/story/16/08/...omputer-outage

one of the comments links to this FT thread, so now it's full circle :D

My boss was on an ill-fated 7:00ish pm flight from ATL-DCA last night. They played the creeping delay game (and it wasn't delayed at all 90 minutes ahead of time!) until 1am, when they canceled.

He decided to just do today's meeting over the telephone, but he's trying to get to his more important meeting tomorrow morning, ATL-BWI. Poor guy got a 6 hour delay just last Sunday flying back from MCO, he's had a rough time of it.

I had this exact problem on 9/11. I was piloting myself from GFK to MSP. Took off only minutes before ground stop. Since was beautiful day fly VFR and there was no need to be in contact with ATC. Got to around Detroit Lakes, MN and the odd frequency I had turned to had a couple of drunks (or so I thought) talking about the ground stop and how everything was grounded. Flew on for a few minutes before heard them say it again. Called up Flight Service and they confirmed that I was "by order of the FAA Administrator to land at the nearest suitable airport." This was Detroit Lakes. Landed and then had to figure out how to get back to Grand Forks. Being only 19, the local rental car company agent didn't want to rent to me. Finally the GM (it was part of a car dealership) came out to see what the matter was. He looked at the agent and said, if he can rent a $100k plane and fly it by himself over our heads, I think we can rent him a car.

So glad I decided to sit out August travel on DL this year, usually go cross-country right about now for my Dad's birthday.

Re-routed or trapped over the years over blizzards, airport hijacking shootouts (Larnaca) and blood-in-the-streets purges (Addis Ababa), but it's nice to sit one out for a change. My backyard looks pretty good right now.

To give perspective on the cancellations for today:

By carrier:
Cancel #/% Delay #/%
616 16% 941 25% Delta
17 4% 41 11% Compass Airlines
16 0% 183 10% ExpressJet
4 0% 53 7% Endeavor Air

By hub:
198 13% 374 25% Hartsfield-Jackson Intl (KATL)
37 3% 101 9% Los Angeles Intl (KLAX)
25 3% 89 12% Minneapolis/St Paul Intl (KMSP)
24 5% 58 12% Salt Lake City Intl (KSLC)
17 2% 84 12% Detroit Metro Wayne Co (KDTW)
14 2% 59 8% Seattle-Tacoma Intl (KSEA)
13 2% 52 8% LaGuardia (KLGA)

ATL is taking the most of it in terms of cancellations and its primarily hitting MD88,MD90,717 operated flights the most. Many of them are the domestic short-haul mainline flights. The international flights are mostly operating, albet delays and out-of-position aircraft persist.

MSP & SLC are taking the brunt of domestic A319 & A320 cancellations, but they are much smaller in scale than ATL.

DCI carriers are are operating close to normal.

One can assume they are going to try to get the narrow body mainline airplanes and crews in position tonight as much as possible to reset and operate a more normal schedule tomorrow, however it sounds like lingering system issues are still creating throughput/capacity reduction system-wide.

Just updated wiki with about three more updates, Delta just released a Q&A regarding compensation that may clear up some confusion.

At the moment, Delta is up to 616 cancelled and 944 delayed flights today.

I was caught up in this mess. I was due to fly out of LGA to DTW on DL 2331 due out at 8:50pm Monday. About 8pm they announce that the flight that has our crew is delayed till early morning and the new departure time was 6am(the md-88 for our flight was at the gate parked but no crew). The Delta app wasn't working kept crashing but was able to rebook via a gate agent to DL2807. Some people asked but they claimed they can't book you on another carrier. 2807 was originally supposed to depart around 5pm but it was delayed till 10pm which Is why I was able to get on it. Got my same seat and class (delta first). The 10pm departure came and went due to traffic on the runway and finding a gate. They ended up moving the MD-88 and parking the Airbus there so they could unload the pax clean and stock the plane. We finally departed around 12am. They filled the plane as to get as many people home as possible. Landing at DTW was uneventful no wait for a gate. Only hiccup was a last minute baggage carousel change and my cab was delayed 40 minutes cause of all the delayed flights stretched them thin. I think 2331 ended up being cancelled. Delta did pass out those red blankets for those sticking it out in the terminal for the 6am departure time. The pilots and crew on my flight were friendly and kept providing updates and information and the pilot also explained why the failure happened.

Bus tickets from Atlanta to Charleston are $50. Savannah/Hilton Head are even less.

Not glamorous, but it's 5 hours or so and then you're enjoying your vacation. Yes, it's money but....you're really going on your honeymoon or travelling overseas without even $100 for contingencies?

Resetting equipment/crew positions makes a ton of sense, IM(non-expert)O. Removes out-of-place resources from the equation for the most part, and allows the operation to focus more effort on getting people on to the flights to move them along. Basically they're trying to solve one problem so it's out of the way and they can focus on another - and in this case the faster they can resume normal, relatively-efficient flight operations, the faster they can use their normal operations to solve getting pax to their destinations.

Flightstats is saying 684 and 1999. I've noticed Flightaware and Flightstats can vary pretty wildly at times. Yesterday's numbers show 736 and 2791 on Flightstats and only 496 and 425 on Flightaware. DL acknowledged 870 cancellations yesterday at 10PM (may have included regionals). I'd say Flightstats is likely the more accurate count.

Think you missed about 1,000 delays:)

684 cancelled and 1999 delayed so far with quite a lot more coming the rest of the day. There are already 54 flights cancelled for tomorrow as well.

He was using Flightaware numbers (see my post above).