The FAA has announced a domestic ground stop on all Delta flights–
GROUND STOP DAL AND SUB CARRIERS TO DOMESTIC DESTINATIONS.
INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT ARE EXEMPT. THIS IS DUE TO AUTOMATION ISSUES WITH DAL. UPDATE AT 0030Z.
Many are reporting that ALL Delta flights are grounded.
Delta’s mobile app and website are also down. If I pull up delta.com I can reach the website, but the flight search tool is not visible–
What Really Happened?
In a recent post entitled The Travel Infrastructure Problem in the USA I mentioned that so many of the vital transportation systems — both public and private — are not beyond the reach of hackers. Delta, like American and United, have deferred new and advanced flight operation systems in favor of the “tried and trued”. The old adage, “Leave well enough alone” is applied, especially when system upgrades cost millions of dollars.
But does outmoded technology — like the DHS outage last month — just shut down? There, the DHS blamed the problem on a faulty software update. Perhaps the same will be true of Delta’s outage this afternoon.
Yet hacking is the first thing that crossed my mind. I marvel at what an effective tool of war and diplomacy hacking has the capacity (and has already proven) to be. Imagine an era in which electrical grids, water systems, traffic signals, or airlines are routinely shut down in a cyber tit-for-tat. Economic damage of today’s event? Millions of dollars if the expected ripple effects causes tens of thousands of missed connections and missed meetings over the next 24 hours.
And this “war” can be raged all from the comfort of an armchair 7,000 miles away.
This issues fascinates me and I guarantee you that if not this Delta incident today, we will one day witness an airline shut down as an act of cyber warfare. What a wonderful world…
CONCLUSION
While hacking may or may not be to blame, Gary gets it rights in stating that instead of investing in fighting Gulf carriers and devaluing Skymiles, Delta should invest in creating more secure and dependable systems.
No. It is incompetency. It is arrogance. They focus on taking from customers rather than giving. They spend their IT time in finding ways to devalue miles, increase award cost and their executives bragging about how good they are. This is the second big glitch in their systems and I would not be surprised if Delta execs find someone to blame that is not them. BTW, I have a 7AM flight with Delta tomorrow morning and I really hope they get ready for it. They charged me $1k for a flight from MSP to PHL and I am siting in a middle seat. Too much for being a Platinum medallion
Well?
Did how was your flight?
On time or delayed?
Sorry for the typo, “HOW” was your flight and “WAS” it on time?
Ironically, United had a great computer system (Fastair) which operated with minimal keystrokes and an easy, modern display until Continental decided to dump their antiquated 1970’s SHARES system on them at the Merger. What a piece of cr@p. United employees went from driving a Mercedes to a Ford Pinto.
The stupid thing couldn’t even give seat assignments on a through flight from A to B to C or the downline flight if there was an actual change of planes. Same thing with bag tags – you could only tag beyond a connecting point by calling a help desk or typing in a long manual entry to have to “tell” the computer what to do (think DOS).
So United did not defer anything at the merger, they were FORCED by Continental to take on SHARES. We all know what has happened since then. By the way, it was so awful initially (bare bones training), it took years off our (UA agents’) lives.