Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, speaks during a keynote at CES 2020 in Las Vegas on January 7, 2020.
Bridget Bennett | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian on Friday offered employees two free plane tickets to thank employees who were caught up in massive turmoil last month over a failed plan. Crowd Strike A software update has grounded thousands of customers and crew.
Delta had more trouble than its competitors recovering from outages that took thousands of Windows computers offline around the world, impacting industries from health care to banking.
According to FlightAware, the airline canceled more than 5,000 flights between July 19 and 24, more than it lost in all of 2019. Bastian said earlier this week that the incident cost the company about $500 million, an amount equivalent to about 40% of Delta’s second-quarter profits. The airline said its crew-tracking platform contributed to the cancellations and disruptions.
Delta told CNBC on Wednesday that the company had to manually reset 40,000 servers.
“This has been a humiliating moment for our company,” Bastian said in his letter, which was seen by CNBC, “I know it has been extremely difficult, and I am deeply sorry for what you have endured. Operational disruption of this length and magnitude is completely unacceptable — you and our customers deserve better.”
According to another memo to Delta employees on Friday, more than 4,000 Delta flight attendants flew more than 6,100 flights during the disruptions and received additional pay.
“Your efforts throughout have been heroic,” Bastian told the staff.
The two “positive space” cards Bastian gave the employees were confirmed seats like the ones a customer would get, different from the free reserve flights that airline employees typically do if there are available seats.
The Delta Organizing Committee of the Association of Flight Attendants, which is campaigning to form a union for Delta flight attendants, said the ticket offer “will not be enough.” The organizing committee said in a written statement that the airline’s management routinely makes “minor adjustments to maintain operational continuity without making significant enough changes to prevent future collapse.”
Delta’s operations have since stabilized, but the flight cancellations and delays have stranded thousands of people and damaged Delta’s reputation for reliability. Company executives often point to Delta’s successful work in winning over business and leisure customers willing to pay more to fly with it, and marketing itself as a premium airline.
A Delta spokesperson said earlier this week that the airline has processed “thousands” of refund and compensation requests.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said last week that the Department of Transportation is investigating the Delta disruptions. Similar disruptions have occurred at other airlines, such as the massive 2022 holiday crash in Southwest Airlines After the winter storms, it highlighted how technological problems are seriously affecting air travel.
Bastian said Delta plans to take legal action against CrowdStrike and Microsoft “to compensate for the losses we have suffered due to the outage” and that it has hired the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner.
Microsoft declined to comment. CrowdStrike said it was “unaware of any litigation and has no further comment.”