For the next four days, Delta Air Lines is waving checked bag fees (and even overweight bag fees) as its meltdown recovery continues.
As Recovery Continues, Delta Is Temporarily Waving Checked Bag Fees
As noted by JonNYC, Delta is pulling all stops to get its operation back on track. That now includes waiving all checked bag and overnight fees from July 24-28, 2024. Each passenger can check up to three bags at 70 pounds each. Oddly there is one exception: Amsterdam (ostensibly because KLM handles baggage fees in AMS).
-does not apply to flights ex-AMS I don't believe
– it appears that customers who paid bag fees since the beginning of the melt-down might be potentially eligible for refunds
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) July 24, 2024
As of 10:00 am ET, no official notice of this has been placed on Delta’s baggage website.
Why is Delta waiving this fee? It has not told us, but I’d imagine two reasons are at play. First, many have already paid for bags and the process of dealing with baggage fee refunds or doubel charges for displaced passengers is not efficient. Second, I’d imagine this will encourage more people to check bags and therefore speed up the boarding process so that fewer flights will be delayed.
It’s still early, but Delta has only canceled 47 mainline flights today (only 1% of its overall schedule) and delayed 226 flights (6%). If that sticks, I’d say the “meltdown” is over. Even so, Delta is grappling with thousands of displaced passengers and trying to accommodate them is not easy when flights are already running full during the busy summer holiday period.
If you’ve already paid for a checked bag you may be eligible for a refund. While Delta has not made the conditions clear, you can request a refund here.
CONCLUSION
Delta is temporarily suspending baggage fees as it attempts to restore smooth operations. Keep in mind, though, that this is only for travel through July 28, 2024 so if your return flight falls after that date, do expect to pay regular baggage fees.
General observation about the crowdstrike outage:
It’s astonishing that an update with such massive effects was pushed out simultaneously across the planet with apparently insufficient testing or controls to prevent rendering a machine unbootable. I’ve read IT forums that explained technically what happened, but like with the 737 Max and Challenger disaster, our society has not yet addressed the human element to why these occurred:
The CEO’s and management simply didn’t fear any consequences for reckless behavior.
Nobody at NASA, Morton Thiokol or Boeing went to prison for ignoring engineer’s safety warnings that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people.
Crowdstrike’s CEO most likely has engaged in industry standard practices of “stacked ranking”, outsourcing, and cutbacks while increasing executive pay. “Skeleton crews” are terrified to bring up safety concerns because they were retained to be “yes men” and not to suggest safety limits that cost money.
ONLY absolute emergency updates should be pushed out simultaneously and I’m talking something like Cyberdyne Terminator-style emergencies and even then, should be fully disclosed and submit to review on the consumer side with human key-turn approval. For example: the ability to say that unless an event such a mass hacker attack is imminent, you should be able to delay the push for a few days to see if there’s reported fallout by others. As HOME CONSUMERS it’s clear that we don’t have this right with Microsoft often going to measures to prevent users from disabling a “feature” or at least delaying it.
Crowd strike’s CEO’s and management should have all their bonuses and pay retroactively confiscated and terminated immediately. . Crowd strike stock value should be seized by the SEC and monies paid out to consumers who were harmed by this company. New management should be chosen by the regulators with an emphasis on merit hiring, a workplace that behaves ethically towards employees including incentives for whistleblowing and reducing layoffs.
Nah, nevermind. Crowd strike CEO will have his bonus reduced by 10% and have to cancel a few golf outings. That should be sufficient.
Good, now we have a solution for the under 18 ban.