System-wide glitch briefly grounds all domestic Delta flights

Delta Air Lines passengers across the US were left stranded for over an hour on Tuesday evening, after a technical issue forced the carrier to ground all domestic flights.

Customers of the Atlanta-based top-tier US airline took to Twitter to report the major system outage, which left incoming planes sitting on taxiways waiting for gates to open, and outbound flights unable to depart.

Delta’s website also appeared to go down briefly, with passengers reporting that they could not log in to the system.

In its initial statement, Delta blamed the disruptions on a “technology issue” affecting some of its systems. In order to restore operations to normal as quickly as possible, the airline said it had to issue a groundstop.

Within an hour of the announcement, Delta said it had resolved the issue and its systems were back up and running as usual.

“During the technology issue, Delta issued a mainline groundstop in the US until systems could be brought back up. There was no disruption or safety impact on any Delta flights in the air,” it stated.

Delta provides flights to over 300 destinations in some 60 countries. However, it was only domestic US flights that were grounded in all 48 contiguous states. “International flights are still ongoing,” Delta said in a response to a customer amid the commotion.

While it is not clear what caused the problem in the first place, it is known that Delta’s computer tracking system had not been working.

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