Flight delays and cancellations continue Saturday but in lower numbers

Airlines made progress toward containing the fallout from a tech outage that disrupted global travel on Friday, though some flight delays and cancellations extended into Saturday. In all, about 3,400 flights to, from and within the United States were canceled on Friday, according to FlightAware, a company that tracks flight information. That made it the worst day of the year for flight cancellations, beating Jan. 15 when airlines besieged by bad winter storms canceled nearly 3,200 flights in the United States. Delays and cancellations on Saturday appeared on track to be much lower than on Friday. Airlines had canceled about 1,600 flights as of midafternoon, with Delta Air Lines and United Airlines among the hardest hit, according to FlightAware. “Delta teams in airports, on board flights, on the phones and in messaging are working tirelessly to care for customers as the airline works to put flight crews and aircraft back in position following the disruption,” the airline said in a statement. Most of the flight cancellations on Saturday were concentrated in the morning and early afternoon, Delta said. In a statement, United said, “Most of our technology systems have been restored and our reliability is improving, although we will continue to see cancellations and delays this weekend.” It added, “Our customer service teams in call centers and airports are working significant overtime” to help passengers, including offering “hotel and food vouchers when needed.” Several carriers said they would waive fees and fare differences or offer refunds for affected passengers. The Transportation Department said that carriers may also have to compensate some travelers for food, lodging and transport. In a statement on Saturday, American Airlines said it had fully recovered from the outage, with cancellations totaling “less than 1% of our total operation.” The outage on Friday was caused when CrowdStrike, a widely used cybersecurity provider, issued a flawed software update to Microsoft devices. Soon after, airlines and many other businesses and institutions began suffering technical failures. For airlines, a wide range of systems were affected, including those that calculate aircraft weight, check in customers, issue boarding passes and manage call center phone lines. The problems for airlines peaked early on Friday morning, with most major U.S. airlines having resumed flying by the start of the workday. But the early disruption continued to reverberate throughout the day.<br/>