Small fire caused outage that scrapped more than 2K Delta flights this week, CEO says

ATLANTA, Aug. 11 (UPI) -- A small fire was behind the systems power outage that canceled more than 2,000 Delta flights this week, the company's CEO said.

The outage began Monday and led the carrier to scrap about 1,000 flights. Cancellations affected about 800 flights Tuesday and another 300 Wednesday, and caused numerous delays.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the outage that disrupted all the related systems was caused by a small fire at the company's Atlanta technology center -- and that he takes personal responsibility for the problem.

The fire was also confirmed by Delta in an email to Atlanta news outlet WXIA-TV.

Officials said the fire began in a power control module at the center and created a power surge that exploded a transformer and cut power to numerous Delta servers.

Thursday, the flights schedule at Delta was returning to normal, as no outage-related cancellations were reported.

"We know this has been a rough couple of days for our customers and apologize to those who have experienced our less-than-stellar operation," Delta Senior Vice President Bill Lentsch said.

Wednesday, the airline noted several instances in which it tried to make up for the cancellations and delays to some of its flyers via social media.

One passenger received a $25 Starbucks gift card, another's spouse was sent a flower arrangement, and another's child was sent a gift at her first day at school.