Delta CEO tells travels that airline mess should be resolved by Thursday

The CEO of Delta Air Lines says he expects the carrier to be fully recovered by Thursday after canceling nearly 7,000 flights this week in a wake of a global technology glitch that crippled its crew and flight scheduling system.

Nearly 1 million passengers waited in long lines and sometimes for days trying to get new flights as the Atlanta-based carrier worked to recover after a software update by the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike disabled computers around the world. The outage began Friday morning.

“I know the last few days have been difficult. To our customers who were impacted, I want to thank you for your patience and apologize again for the disruption to your travel,” CEO Ed Bastian wrote in an update Wednesday. “We understand how important travel is in your lives, and we remain committed to taking care of those whose flights may still be impacted, with meals, hotel accommodations and ground transportation offered through vouchers and reimbursements. We’re also providing impacted customers with Delta SkyMiles and travel vouchers as a further gesture of apology.”

On Tuesday, federal regulators launched an investigation into Delta to ensure the airline lives up to its word and is complying with rules about offering compensation and refunds to passengers whose flights were canceled or significantly delayed.

Delta, the dominant carrier at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, has called off 47 flights nationwide as of 7:40 am Wednesday, a significant drop from earlier in the week. Bastian said he expected cancellations on Wednesday to “be minimal” and that “Thursday is expected to be a normal day, with the airline fully recovered and operating at a traditional level of reliability.”

Just 14 Delta flights have been canceled at MSP as of 7:40 am, according to flightware.com

Bastian in his statement placed the blame for the airline’s meltdown on Crowdstrike, and said that techs at Delta have been working to fix the problems, and the worst of them are “behind us.”