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A day after a system outage forced the airline to cancel 1,000 flights, Delta said it cancelled another 530 flights on Tuesday. An additional 1,800 other flights have been delayed, according to flight tracker FlightStats. In a video posted Tuesday afternoon, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said Delta has spent "hundreds of millions of dollars" over the past three years upgrading its systems and adding backups "to prevent what happened yesterday from occurring." Still, he said, "core systems and key systems did not kick over to the backup power source." That caused the entire system to crash -- and the company still hasn't determined why that happened. In a separate statement Tuesday, Delta COO Gil West gave a few more details about why the airline is still bogged down with delays and cancellations. "Delta agents today are using the original interface we designed for this system while we continue with our resetting efforts," West said. As a result, it's slower to check in customers, assign seats and board fliers, a Delta spokesperson explained. "It's like they're using DOS instead of Microsoft," the spokesperson said. Making matters worse, Delta has an unusually high volume of customers accessing its systems as fliers reschedule cancelled or delayed flights. Then there's a staffing issue. "When Delta doesn't fly aircraft, not only do customers not get to their destination, but flight crews don't get to where they are scheduled to be," West said. The airline is scrambling to redeploy crews and aircraft as the impact of the outage rippled through the system. Experts said it will be Wednesday, at best, before the schedule can be back to normal. The airline is offering refunds to passengers on cancelled or "significantly delayed" flights. It also said passengers whose flights are cancelled or delayed more than three hours will get $200 travel vouchers for future flights.<br/>

We don't cancel flights. That's been the message for the past two years from Delta Air Lines. Double decker buses roamed the streets of New York, wrapped in ads proclaiming "canceling cancellations." Delta executives boasted about the number of days without a single flight scrapped. That all literally ground to a halt Monday when a system-wide computer outage led to the cancellation of more than 1,500 flights. Passengers were stranded around the globe with many spending the night in the airport. Until this outage, Delta had an impressive record, envied by other airlines. By June 9 of this year, Delta had already notched up 100 days where none of its own jets cancelled flights — more than all of its major competitors' no-cancel days combined. And the cancellations during the other 61 days were mostly related to weather, not maintenance issues. "Our people are hitting it out of the park, delivering on our promise to be a safe and reliable airline and making canceling cancellations a reality," Gil West, Delta's COO, said in a news release at the time trumpeting its record. Sometimes, Delta took extreme measures to preserve that record such as letting delays roll on throughout the day instead of canceling. But the lack of cancellations and the airline's mantra of "keep climbing" won over business travellers willing to pay extra for flights that arrive on time. A decade ago, Delta was getting 90 cents for every dollar charged by its competitors. Today, it gets 110 cents, Delta's new CEO, Ed Bastian noted in a May interview. But Monday's outage threatens to wipe away all that trust that Delta has worked to build. It took Delta more than 24 hours to explain what happened: a power control malfunction that led to a power surge and loss of electricity. When the power came back some systems switched to backups, others didn't and that, Delta said, caused "instability in these systems." "Obviously this is a public relations disaster. But they're not unique. This has happened to pretty much every major airline," said Jim Corridore, of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Since this is the airline's first major outage — and as long as there isn't another one — Corridore said "Delta may get a pass here."<br/>

The failure of Delta’s worldwide computer network this week spotlights the vulnerability of the information systems sustaining the biggest US carriers, each of which has contended with major disruptions during the last year. Complex networks cobbled together over the decades need major overhauls requiring significant new investments, said Bob Edwards, a former CIO for United Continental. Recent flaws in computer systems quickly escalated into corporate black eyes that exacted costs in both money and reputation. “I don’t believe the flight ops, maintenance, passenger service systems, crew and dispatch applications are engineered with the level of redundancy needed,” said Edwards, who retired in 2014 under pressure after several service disruptions at United. More disruptions are a near certainty: “Mistakes will happen, devices will malfunction.” The Delta debacle marks a wake-up call for an airline industry in which outdated information systems can strand thousands of passengers. The Atlanta-based airline, which had been leading major carriers in reliability, is far from alone in stumbling. Southwest Airlines said a computer failure July 20 would cost it “tens of millions” of dollars after more than 2,300 flights were cancelled. The cost of lost revenue, accommodating passenger on other flights and other issues may cut the airline’s Q3 earnings by as much as 10%, Dan McKenzie, an analyst at Buckingham Research Group, said in a note Tuesday. Unlike a factory hit by a disruption or strike, airlines already running near capacity have limited ways to make up lost revenue.<br/>

Airline reviews and rating site SkyTrax has dubbed Garuda Indonesia the most loved airline in the world. Garuda took the top position from more than 420 participating airlines with an 85% satisfaction score, in a survey conducted by the website. “This award makes us proud but it also another challenge for Garuda Indonesia to always give the best to its passengers,” Garuda Indonesia President Director Arif Wibowo said Tuesday. He added, “This success is inseparable from the thousands of hands who work hard to always give the best service as a five-star airline to passengers.” The survey criteria included airline seat comfort, onboard services, onboard WiFi, airport services and cost to service comparison. <br/>