Department of Transportation Opens Official Investigation Into Delta Air’s Operational Meltdown

The Department of Transportation (DOT) says it has opened a formal investigation into whether Delta Air Lines is fulfilling its legal obligations to stranded passengers who have been impacted by the carrier’s operational meltdown in the wake of the CrowdStrike IT outage.

Taking to X, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the investigation would seek to “ensure the airline is following the law and taking care of its passengers during continued widespread disruptions.”

Buttigieg added: “All airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly, and I will make sure that right is upheld.”

On Tuesday, there were signs that Delta was slowly getting on top of the meltdown, with the airline cancelling less than 500 flights as of midday ET. A further 696 flights were, however, delayed, and issues are anticipated to continue for much of the week.

According to data supplied by the flight tracking website Flight Aware, Delta has cancelled more than 4,200 flights and experienced delays on 5,684 flights since Saturday.

In fact, Delta has cancelled nearly four times as many flights between July 20 and July 23 as American Airlines and United Airlines combined.

Delta has attributed the cause of the travel chaos to a vital crew scheduling tool that was taken offline during the CrowdStrike outage last Friday. The airline says it quickly lost track of pilots and flight attendants and that its scheduling team weren’t able to keep up with the sheer amount of changes.

The beleaguered airline has repeatedly blamed an ‘external vendor issue’ for the travel misery being inflicted on tens of thousands of passengers while refusing to acknowledge that every other US airline was able to quickly recover their operations.

Delta’s chief information officer Rahul Samant told staffers on Monday that the carrier was working “feverishly” to get its crew tracker system back up and running but admitted that the airline was still trying to work out how to resync and reset this critical aspect of its operation.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Delta confirmed that it was in receipt of the DOTs notice of investigation and that the airline was “fully cooperating” with the department.

“We remain entirely focused on restoring our operation after cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike’s faulty Windows update rendered IT systems across the globe inoperable,” the airline told us in an emailed statement.

“Across our operation, Delta teams are working tirelessly to care for and make it right for customers impacted by delays and cancellations as we work to restore the reliable, on-time service they have come to expect from Delta.”