In July, Delta experienced a significant increase in flight cancellations, reaching a rate of 5.28%, a stark difference from its June rate of 0.8%. This decline placed Delta at the bottom of the U.S. airline industry, a position it is not accustomed to.
The primary reason behind Delta’s spike in cancellations was the slow recovery from the July 19 CrowdStrike outage. This software-update failure at the cybersecurity firm had a profound impact on airlines that heavily relied on Microsoft Windows systems, like Delta. In the aftermath of the outage, Delta struggled to recover, resulting in the cancellation of nearly 6,500 flights in just five days.
Industry Comparison
Comparing to other major U.S. carriers, it is evident that Delta was hit the hardest by the CrowdStrike outage. United, which also had a slow recovery, managed to reduce its cancellation rate to 3.4%. In contrast, Southwest, unaffected by the outage, maintained an impressively low cancellation rate of just 0.57%.
Despite the high cancellation rates, United and Delta fared comparatively better in terms of on-time performance on the flights they did operate. While Delta’s on-time rate stood at 72.36%, United’s was slightly higher at 73.12%. In contrast, Spirit Airlines, with a July on-time rate of 65.19%, had the lowest performance among U.S. carriers.
The impact of Delta’s flight cancellations in July was far-reaching, affecting approximately 1.3 million customers. As the airline industry continues to recover from the challenges posed by the CrowdStrike outage, it is essential for Delta and other carriers to focus on improving their operational resilience and customer service to regain the trust of travelers.