Delta Air Lines was forced to ground 100 airplanes for emergency inspections at its Atlanta Hartsfield hub on Friday night after severe summer weather, including a wild hailstorm, swept across the region, potentially causing structural damage to any airplanes that weren’t in a hangar.
The Atlanta-based carrier was immediately forced to take any planes that were on the ground at Hartsfield at the time of the storm out of service so that engineers could carry out inspections and ensure there was no damage.
Remarkably, the airline said that engineers worked flat out throughout Friday night and managed to clear every one of those planes for a return to service by Saturday morning.
Those valiant efforts did not, however, save Delta from declaring a major ‘irregular operations’ event (known within the aviation industry as IRROPS).
As high winds and a power outage forced the evacuation of the control tower at Atlanta Hartsfield on Friday night, Delta had no option but to cancel hundreds of flights, impacting operations across much of its network.
Delta normally operates more than 900 daily flights out of its Atlanta hub, but just before 8 pm on June 27, the airline was taken by surprise by the severe weather that swept across the airport.
All takeoffs and landings had to be halted for more than an hour, with dozens of inbound flights being forced to make unscheduled diversions to avoid the severe weather.
Around 14% of the airline’s daily schedule was canceled as a result of the storm, and the impacts are expected to be felt for the next few days.
Despite the very real disruption, Delta may have escaped lightly from this hailstorm. Last August, Canadian airline Westjet was forced to ground 10% of its fleet for days after the planes sustained severe damage from a hailstorm that struck Calgary Airport.
Although the storm had been forecast, the airline claims it only became aware of just how serious the impending hailstorm was 30 minutes before it swept in.
As a result, the airline didn’t have time to move its planes undercover or fly them out of Calgary and away from the threat of being damaged.
Having taken a beating for its response to last July’s Crowdstrike IT outage, Delta is promising to pay for overnight accommodations for impacted passengers and is also proactively offering meal and transportation vouchers.
Delta customer care teams have been told to be flexible with the help they offer disrupted passengers and are being encouraged to apologize even though the weather event was outside the airline’s control.
