Delta Air Lines has had a difficult start to Friday morning following a network outage affecting 
Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW). The Michigan facility is a key hub for the 
SkyTeam founding member, but IT issues affecting the airport’s McNamara Terminal have brought it to a standstill.
With Delta being the main user of the McNamara Terminal, the ground stop that has been issued as a result of the network outage only affects the US legacy carrier and its subsidiaries, with other airlines still able to come and go as normal. However, given the scale of Delta’s operations in Detroit, where it has a 53.7% market share according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the disruption is affecting large volumes of passengers.
Delta’s Detroit Ground Stop
The reason for the frantic Friday morning that 
Delta Air Lines is currently experiencing at its hub in Detroit, Michigan, is a network outage that hit the McNamara Terminal early this morning. According to Click On Detroit, reports of the issue began to emerge at around 5:00 am local time, with Fox 2 noting that the situation had got to a point where no Delta flights were able to take off from or land at Metropolitan Wayne County Airport.
In response to the outage, which reportedly resulted in long queues at the airport and passengers being unable to check in to their flights this morning, Delta Air Lines issued a ground stop concerning its Detroit operations. While this was initially set to be in place for a few hours, Click On Detroit notes that, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, there is a 30-60% chance of this being extended. Detroit Airport issued the following statement:
“Delta Air Lines is experiencing a network outage affecting operations at the McNamara Terminal. Delta has initiated a ground stop for its flights while the airline works to resolve the issue.”
Maintenance Work Is Ongoing
Given Delta’s huge presence in Detroit, an extension to the ground stop would not only affect huge volumes of passengers at the Michigan airport today, but likely also more of its guests elsewhere over the weekend, due to aircraft and members of crew being displaced due to the disruption. Click On Detroit highlights the fact that IT maintenance has begun as Delta recites the issue, but the exact nature of the problem is unknown.
The full extent of the disruption that the network outage concerning Delta Air Lines’ operations at the McNamara Terminal in Detroit remains to be seen. For now, however, live data made available by Flight Aware shows that 15 departures have been cancelled and a further 40 delayed out of Metropolitan Wayne County Airport today, with 17 inbound flights being cancelled and another 25 being delayed. These figures are likely to rise.
According to present scheduling data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company, a grand total of 330 Delta Air Lines flights are scheduled to depart from Detroit today. Atlanta (ATL) is the top destination, with 10 planned departures, followed by Grand Rapids (GRR) and Indianapolis (IND), with seven apiece.
Detroit Overtakes Minneapolis To Become Delta Air Lines’ 2nd Busiest Hub
Detroit is Delta’s fastest-growing hub.
Detroit Isn’t The Only Major Airport Facing An IT Outage Today
Today seems to be a particularly bad day for IT outages in the commercial aviation sector, with Edinburgh Airport (EDI) in Scotland facing a similar issue. According to the BBC, the facility suspended both departures and arrivals at around 8:30 am local time, with flights only resuming two hours later, at 10:40 local time. Data from FlightAware shows that, while cancellations were minimal, a third of the day’s departures were delayed.
The BBC noted that Amsterdam Schiphol Airport (AMS), Bristol (BRS), Frankfurt (FRA), and London Gatwick (LGW) were among the destinations impacted by the delays and cancellations that arose as a result of the IT outage. The issue specifically affected the airport’s air traffic control provider, which is why a blanket ban on arriving and departing traffic had to be put in place, as opposed to Detroit’s issue, which only impacted one terminal.
