Dive Brief:

• A major computer systems outage resulted in the cancellation of about 170 Delta Airlines flights on Sunday and another 110 on Monday, according to multiple reports. 

• Delta's website and mobile app also went down, as did the company’s airport information screens and computers at its reservation desks.

• Little information about what caused the outage has been made available. A post on Delta’s news page simply offered that a "systems outage" had occurred.

Dive Insight:

This is not the first major computer outage for Delta. In August, the airline lost power at its operations center in Atlanta setting off a system failure that resulted in around 2,000 flight cancellations over several days.

The failure demonstrated the potential consequences of relying on antiquated technology and patchwork systems. The airline industry is particularly vulnerable, as many airlines have been slow to modernize their systems. 

The first Delta outage led to a lot of down time and angry customers, but the second outage may lead to customers lost for good. Delta apparently did not learn from its mistakes. Companies hoping to avoid the same situation may want to consider regionally dispersed control centers and ensuring redundancy measures are in place and fully operational.