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Hartsfiel-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) is the busiest airport in the United States and Delta’s largest hub. A massive hailstorm blew through on Friday night, which caused the airline to pull 100 planes from service while they were inspected for potential damage. You can imagine the havoc this wreaked for summer travelers and Delta reportedly was forced to cancel 360 flights systemwide on Friday and 584 more on Saturday.
The airport was on a ground stop on Friday night from 7:11 PM to 8:30 PM. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was forced to evacuate most of its personnel from the control tower during strong winds. Heavy rain caused flash flooding and hail pummeled aircraft. More than 90 aircraft were diverted to other Southeastern airports to avoid the storm.
There is no question that this was a weather-related incident yet Delta is going out of its way to accommodate passengers and reimburse costs for their disrupted travel. @JonNYC shared Delta’s memo on X and I am quite impressed with what it is offering. It reads:
Delta will pay for accommodations, vouchers, rental car reimbursement, OAL travel, and rebooking assistance to customers whose travel has been impacted by the event.”
This is generous and nice gesture considering that this was out of he airline’s control. This is a complete about-face from Delta’s reaction to the CrowdStrike that crippled the airline last July and now sees ongoing litigation after the massive IT outage. Delta was slow moving in acknowledging the issue, apologizing, and assisting passengers last summer.
Anthony’s Take: The weather just keeps getting crazier. Between the blazing temps across the US and the world (it’s 95 degrees in Milan where I am writing this from) as well as this storm and others. It’s good to see Delta doing some good and helping travelers with their summer travel issues due to this freak weather event.
(Featured Image Credit: Delta Air Lines.)
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Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links above This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
1 comment
I’m surprised there wasn’t more damage. I was staying the ATL Renaissance (for the Airliners International convention), watching the storm out my hotel window. It was one of the worst I’ve seen in a while. Later a bunch of us went down to the bar that looks out on the maintenance area & watched some hail bunce off a DL A350.