Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian delivers a keynote speech at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, on Tuesday, January 7, 2020.
Bridget Bennett | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Delta Airlines Chief Executive Ed Bastian offered two free travel passes to employees on Friday as a thank you to employees who were involved in a misstep last month that sparked massive chaos. mass strike Software update left thousands of customers and staff stranded.
Delta faced more difficulty than its competitors in recovering from an outage that took thousands of Windows machines offline. 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, CEO Bastian said earlier this week Delta Air Lines said the incident cost the company about $500 million, equivalent to about 40% of Delta’s second-quarter profit.
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.”
Flight cancellations and delays have left thousands stranded and damaged Delta’s reputation for reliability. Its executives often point to Delta’s focus on winning over customers who are willing to pay more to fly with the airline and promoting itself as a premium airline.
Bastian said Delta plans to take legal action against CrowdStrike and Microsoft “to recoup losses caused by the outage,” and hired the law firm of Boies Schiller Flexner.
“Your efforts throughout were heroic,” he told staff.
Microsoft and CrowdStrike had no immediate comment Friday.
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