While most airlines have now emerged from the CrowdStrike software breakdown that left them unable to use their online systems and having to cancel thousands of flights beginning July, 17 Dellta Air Lines (DAL) continues to struggle to the point that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is now investigating why it’s taking so long.
After canceling more than 4,500 flights from Friday, July 17 throughout the weekend, the Atlanta-based airline was still calling off hundreds of flights on July 23.
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With large numbers of passengers left stranded at a connection or otherwise waiting to be placed on a Delta flight to their destination, several airports are also left with luggage that has been separated from their owners.
Travelers film suitcases piling up at Atlanta's airport
As the airline’s hub, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL) has been hit most acutely — a number of travelers have filmed videos of rows and rows of abandoned bags by the baggage carousels at different terminals.
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"I've never seen ATL like this," TikToker @therealbrivx wrote overtop of a video scanning between dozens of unclaimed bags. “So many bags just all mixed up. I hope everyone gets their bags to their final destination.”
Commenters under the video who have also passed through the Atlanta airport over the last five days confirmed that the situation was an “effing nightmare” and a “hot azz mess.”
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'A lot of bags and I don't now which one will be mine'
Similar TikTok videos emerged from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport (ORD) and several cities in Florida.
"There's a lot of bags everywhere and I don't know which one will be mine," a traveler named Rafael who arrived at Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) described to a local branch of NBC.
Such chaos around bags has not been seen since high numbers of travelers taking post-pandemic trips in 2022 sowed chaos across European airports. The situation got so bad that, at one point, Delta had to fly an entire Airbus A330-200 (EADSF) with no people from London to Detroit just to transport 1,000 suitcases that had been separated from their owners in Britain.
"Delta teams worked a creative solution to move delayed checked bags from London-Heathrow on July 11 after a regularly scheduled flight had to be canceled given airport passenger volume restrictions at Heathrow," the airline said in a statement at the time.
The conditions that caused the situation — high numbers of travelers, limited staff to meet such demand, and crowding at certain airports in particular like London's Heathrow — improved to some extent in the few months that followed.
At the same time, the problems are consistent across the industry and spring up again whenever something throws off the systems as occurred with the CrowdStrike outage.
Steve Lazar, another traveler who arrived at Jacksonville and went to retrieve his suitcase at the baggage carousel described it as "an Easter egg hunt" in which he had to go from hall to hall and check dozens of similar-looking bags.
In many cases, travelers were already coming home after long waits at other airports — one couple said they waited more than 24 hours to be placed on a flight home.
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