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The Biden administration is launching an investigation into Delta Air Lines as the carrier’s operational meltdown extended into a fifth day of mass cancellations following an IT outage that affected industries around the world on Friday.

The US Department of Transportation’s Office of Aviation Consumer Protections is looking into the airline’s “continued widespread flight disruptions” and “reports regarding customer service failures,” the agency said Tuesday morning.

That revelation saw the Atlanta-based carrier cancel 1,100 flights a day — or more — for four straight days from Friday to Monday.

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On Tuesday, Delta had already canceled 420 additional flights — about 12% of its operations as of 9:15 a.m. EST, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. The total number of flight cancellations each day has increased over the past few days.

The disruptions have caused chaotic scenes at airports across the country, particularly at Delta’s home base, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL).

Images of frustrated passengers, long lines for customer service and travelers lounging on airport concourse floors have become common in recent days.

“We’ve made it clear to Delta that they must take care of their passengers and their customer service commitments,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday in announcing the investigation, which “will continue to evolve,” the department said, as it processes higher. Volume of customer complaints.

Friday’s IT glitch in the Austin-based crowdstrike affected several US airlines and many more globally, causing major problems for Microsoft clients.

However, Delta’s problems have snowballed even as other US carriers have recovered.

Delta has canceled more than 5,000 flights since Friday.

Crew scheduling system problems

In Monday’s update, CEO Ed Bastin noted that nearly half of the carrier’s global IT systems are Windows-based, and that Delta staff are required to manually repair and reboot each machine, “with additional time required for applications to synchronize and start communicating with each other.” “

These problems have caused particular problems in Delta’s critical crew-scheduling system, which helps the airline get the crew in the right place at the right time.

US travelers know all too well how crew scheduling software outages can significantly affect air travel. Southwest Airlines’ holiday 2022 meltdown was exacerbated by problems with its crew scheduling systems, which caused mounting problems — and contributed to nearly 17,000 cancellations — following a December winter storm before Christmas.

Delta says it is offering affected passengers the option of flight credits for future use or cash refunds for eligible travelers. You can submit a refund request at delta.com/refund.

The airline also notes that it provides food, hotel and ground transportation to stranded passengers in accordance with its commitments listed on the airline’s customer service dashboard.

On what you can do if you’re affected by Delta’s meltdown, read more here.

When will Delta’s meltdown end?

In the meantime, Delta staff are working “around the clock” to get operations back on track, CEO Ed Bastin said in a video message to employees Monday — a message that left uncertain when the problems would end:

“Keep taking great care of our customers and each other in the coming days,” Bastin said.

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