Five days after a global tech outage affected airline travel
around the world, flight delays and cancellations are still causing
chaos at LAX tonight.
Delta Airlines is struggling to get back online, affecting 10s
of thousands of stranded passengers.
Over a half million travelers have been affected by the
crowd strike snafu, and the travel interruptions are expected to
continue through the week.
Ktla's Mary Beth Mcdade live at LAX with the latest
on Delta struggles and reaction from frustrated travelers.
MV Yes, and Mike and Cher, I can tell you
some good news.
The lines here at Delta tonight are nowhere near what
we have seen the last few days.
However, we did still find plenty of passengers that are
dealing with cancellations, delays, and what they describe as a
very painful rebooking process.
Now, the Delta CEO says that it will take at
least two more days for the airline to fully recover.
We were supposed to leave yesterday.
At what time, I don't know, noonish or something.
And we're leaving tonight at 8.
And so we had it cancelled and then rebooked and
just had to hang out in LA for 18 hours.
The nightmare continues for Delta passengers as the airline struggles
to recover from last week's global tech outage.
This mother says the extra hotel night came out of
her pocket and the rebooking process downright frustrating.
Well, we waited on hold for five hours and then
quit.
This woman's vacation has been cut short.
We were originally going to fly out on Friday and
then we were on our way here and then our
flight got cancelled, to which they told us it was
going to be a 700 minute to wait to speak
to a representative to get our flight rebooked.
She finally got a flight to Columbia Tuesday night.
They weren't able to get us in until today, Tuesday,
and our flight has already been delayed.
We informed Delta today that dot is launching an investigation
into the breakdown of operations.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says they're opening their investigation because
of the scale of this problem.
More than 6000 flights have now been canceled since Friday.
I'm hearing a lot of things I'm very concerned about,
including people being on hold for hours and hours trying
to get a new flight, people having to sleep on
airport floors.
Buttigieg says he has communicated to Delta CEO that he
expects the airline to live up to their passenger service
commitment.
That's things like rebooking passengers at no additional cost on
Delta or on other airlines in order to get into
where they're going.
And when there is a lengthy delay to come through
and provide hotels, accommodations, meals, ground transportation, K delays.
Consumer expert says this Delta disaster shows how fragile the
system is and why airlines need to come up with
a game plan for emergencies like this.
So that airline staff, airport staff know what to do,
know what to say and manage to keep their customers,
if not happy, then at least not in pain.
And the CEO of Crowdstrike has been called to testify
before Congress about his company's role in this global tech
outage.
That's going to do it for me here at LAX.
Mary Beth Mcdade, we'll send it back to you in
the studio.