Chaos at Detroit Airport after ground stop for Delta flights

Delta flights to and from Detroit Metro Airport, including those operated by Delta subsidiaries, are grounded Friday morning at the McNamara Terminal amid a computer outage that has halted check-ins and created long lines.

In a statement to The Independent, a Delta spokesperson said, “Due to a technical connectivity issue in Detroit, Delta has issued a ground stop for all flights at DTW airport this morning. Delta teams are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible with safety remaining our priority.”

“We apologize for the inconvenience to our customers who should monitor the status of their flight via the Fly Delta app and Delta.com,” the statement concluded.

It is unclear if the Cloudflare outage that occurred early Friday morning is responsible for the Delta outage. The major Cloudflare outage briefly knocked large portions of the web offline, affecting sites like X, Substack, Canva and even outage tracker Down Detector.

DTW said the issue is limited to Delta and is not affecting any other airlines. The airport posted about Friday’s Delta delays across social media just after 7 a.m.

The Wayne County Airport Authority team is in the McNamara Terminal handing out concession vouchers to affected passengers, DTW said around 8:20 a.m.

“We’re committed to supporting our customers during this time,” DTW said on Facebook.

Airport servers indicate IT maintenance is underway, ClickOnDetroit.com reports. The FAA has issued a ground stop until 8:30 a.m., with a 30- to 60-percent chance of extension.

DTW is Delta’s second-largest hub and a key Eastern US gateway to Asia and Europe, with more than 348 daily departures to 106 destinations worldwide.

More to come…