Last Friday, the world's digital systems experienced the largest scale outage in history, due to a security software bug from US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike that brought down Microsoft's Windows system. This accident disrupted multiple industries including airlines, banks, and healthcare, forcing thousands of flights to be cancelled or delayed.
But to this day, the impact has not subsided: Delta Air Lines Inc. expects to cancel more flights this week.
It is reported that as of Monday afternoon, the airline has cancelled more than 800 flights, bringing the total number of cancelled flights since last Friday's malfunction to over 4600. Delta Air Lines stated that the company is working "day and night" to resume operations, and stated that over half of its global IT systems rely on Microsoft's Windows operating system, which has been affected by software failures.
A video sent to employees by Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian on Monday showed that the company may need a few more days to get out of this predicament. Delta Air Lines stated that one of the most critical systems for ensuring that all flights have crew members is "very complex and requires a lot of time and manual support to synchronize.
These issues evoke the scene of Southwest Airlines collapsing during a winter storm in December 2022, which overwhelmed its crew scheduling system and forced the airline to cancel over 16700 flights within 10 days.
By contrast, most other airlines in the United States returned to normal over the weekend.
According to data from flight tracking website FlightAware, as of around 3pm New York time on Monday, American Airlines Group Inc., United Airlines Holdings Inc., and Southwest Airlines Co. have grounded a total of 79 aircraft.
However, logistics experts have previously warned that this accident has caused disruptions in ports in the United States and around the world, with highly complex aviation systems being hit the hardest, and air transportation may take several weeks to return to normal. Another information security expert pointed out that the large-scale technical failure that occurred last Friday is another example of the world's extreme dependence on a few technology companies.
Delta Air Lines' lower than expected performance announced earlier this month led to a sharp drop in its stock price. As of the close of the US stock market on Monday, Delta Air Lines' stock price fell by 3.6%, and the stock has risen by about 8.4% so far this year.