Ben Mutzabaugh

USA TODAY

LATEST UPDATE: Delta meltdown: Delays drag into Sunday, but are improving

ORIGINAL STORY: Delta Air Lines was still working Saturday to get its flights back on schedule after a round of Atlanta thunderstorms threw a wrench into its system four days ago.

The airline had canceled more than 285 flights as of 12:15 p.m. ET, representing about 10% of the carrier’s daily schedule, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. Adding to the woes for Delta passengers, another 625 flights were delayed -- affecting about a quarter of the carrier's flights nationwide. Fliers at Atlanta's Delta hub faced "extremely long lines" throughout the airport Saturday morning, reported WXIA TV of Atlanta.

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All that comes after severe weather created major disruptions Wednesday in Atlanta, the world’s busiest airport that’s also home to Delta’s top hub. Delta, which prides itself on being the most punctual and reliable of the USA’s “big four” airlines, has not been able to get back on track since.

Poor weather in the Northeast added to the problems later in the week, but Delta’s recovery from the Wednesday storms has been slow. Overall, Delta has canceled more than 3,000 flights since Wednesday, apologizing to customers as it has struggled to get many of them to their final destinations this week.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution takes an interesting and in-depth look at how "one day of thunderstorms in Atlanta caused a meltdown of Delta Air Lines’ flight operations this week." The newspaper's Kelly Yamanouchi notes an unusually long five-hour ground-stop Wednesday by the Federal Aviation Administration played a role, but adds the airline was nonetheless "caught flat-footed and (was) still struggling to recover" days later.

Indeed, the scope of the disruption to Delta’s network that began with the Wednesday storms has been surprisingly large. It marks the airline’s worst operational run since a computer outage in August 2016 plunged the airline into crisis mode.

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Delta updated a statement on its website Saturday, telling customers that it “continues to position aircraft and flight crews after severe weather in Atlanta … and in the Northeast U.S. this week.”

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Things got so bad on Thursday – when poor weather in the Northeast and Great Lakes came on top of the slow recovery in Atlanta – that even Delta’s Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP) hub suffered significant disruptions. Despite clear and relatively calm conditions, more than 5% of the entire day’s schedule was canceled at the airport and about one out of every four flights that did operate did so with a delay. Delta operates more than half of the flights at MSP, while flights on operated by its regional affiliates account for even more there.

Nationally, the carrier was waiving change fees for customers looking to change their travel plans after the week's disruptions. But Delta also warned fliers that finding empty seats in the coming weeks could be challenging because “heavy spring break travel means open seats are very limited for rebooking.”

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Already, tens of thousands of customers have had their plans disrupted by the ongoing flight disruptions-that have occurred starting Wednesday. Many have taken the airline to task on social media, pleading for help or recounting their woes along with hashtags like “#deltafail.”

On Friday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said “dozens of long lines with thousands of passengers trying to get help extended through the terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, as the fallout of Delta Air Lines’ flight cancellations extended into a third day.”

“It’s always busy, but I have never seen this airport like this,” business traveler Farzad Saghian told the newspaper Saghian after his trip home to New York had been canceled and rescheduled at least half-dozen times over two days. “It was like a madhouse.”

Another person took to Twitter under the name Renee Belisle‏, posting a screenshot of a phone that showed a hold time with Delta reservations that lasted nearly 3 ½ hours “and counting.”

As for when Delta might get its schedules back on track, the airline pledged on its website that its employees “are working hard to stabilize the operation to get it back to a reliable state.”

While cancellations on Saturday were significant, they were trending in the right direction – raising hope that Delta could see normal operations by the start of the workweek on Monday.

Stay tuned …