Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian delivers a keynote speech at CES 2020 in Las Vegas on January 7, 2020.
Bridget Bennett | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Delta Airlines Chief Executive Ed Bastian offered two free travel passes to employees on Friday to thank struggling employees massive destruction triggered by a botched incident last month mass strike Software update left thousands of customers and staff stranded.
Delta faces more difficulty than rivals in recovering from outages Causing thousands of Windows machines to go offline around the world, impacting industries from healthcare to banking.
The airline canceled more than 5,000 flights from July 19 to July 24, more than it canceled in all of 2019, according to FlightAware. Bastian said earlier this week that the incident The company lost approximately $500 milliona figure equivalent to approximately 40% of Delta’s second quarter profit. The airline said the crew tracking platform was one of the reasons for flight cancellations and disruptions.
Delta Air Lines told CNBC’s “scream boxOn Wednesday, the airline had to manually reset 40,000 servers.
The outage “is a humbling moment for our company,” Bastian said in Friday’s report, which was seen by CNBC. “I know this is extremely difficult and I am deeply sorry for everything you have suffered. Operational disruption of this length and scale is completely unacceptable – you and our customers deserve better.”
More than 4,000 Delta flight attendants flew more than 6,100 flights during the disruption and received extra pay, according to a separate Delta employee memo on Friday.
“Your efforts throughout were heroic,” Bastian told staff.
The two “positive space” passes Bastian gave employees were confirmed seats like customers, unlike the free standby seats airline employees often do when seats are available.
The organizing committee of the Delta Flight Attendants Association (CWA), which is campaigning to unionize Delta flight attendants, said providing passes “doesn’t solve the problem.” The organizing committee said in a written statement that airline management typically “makes trivial adjustments to maintain operations but does not make changes significant enough to prevent future collapse.”
Delta’s operations have since stabilized, but flight cancellations and delays have stranded thousands of people and damaged the airline’s reputation for reliability. Its executives often point to Delta’s success in winning over leisure and corporate customers who are willing to pay more to fly the airline, and promote itself as premium airline.
A Delta spokesman said earlier this week that the airline had processed “thousands” of refund and reimbursement requests.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is investigating Delta Air Lines Disruption, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said last week. Other airlines are seeing similar disruptions, such as the 2022 Big Holiday Fusion City Southwest Airlines The aftermath of the winter storm highlighted how technological issues can severely disrupt air travel.
Bastian said Delta plans to take legal action against CrowdStrike and Microsoft “to cover our losses from the outage” and has hired Boyce Schiller Flexner LLP.
Microsoft declined to comment. CrowdStrike said it was “unaware of the lawsuit and had no further comment.”
