Summary
- Delta gives employees 2 free travel passes post-IT outage disruption.
- Employees took over 6,000 extra trips during outage period.
- Delta suffered costs estimated at $500 million due to the outage.
Delta Air Lineshas announced that it will give its employees two free travel passes, allowing staff to go anywhere they want on the Delta network. This comes as a thank-you gift for the company’s employees following the disruption last month caused by a Microsoft power outage.
In July, a global IT power outage wreaked havoc worldwide, affecting many different industries, including banks, broadcasters, and the aviation industries for example. Planes were grounded and delayed worldwide, with Delta Air Lines being one of the hardest hit. The outage saw about 6700 of the airline’s flights canceled, which far exceeded the number Delta had throughout 2019 overall.
A thank you
Photo: The Global Guy | Shutterstock
As the airline struggled the most relative to its competitors, it was up to its staff to help in the recovery. In a staff memo on Friday seen by CNBC, the airline’s CEO Ed Bastian said that more than 4000 Delta flight attendants had taken on an additional 6100 trips in total during the disruption. Bastian said:
“Your efforts throughout have been nothing short of heroic.”
He offered two positive space travel passes to employees, which are different from the current free standby flying benefits that employees often have anyway. These travel passes instead allow for confirmed bookings, meaning they are not dependent on remaining availability.
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As airlines deal with the aftermath of the weekend’s system outages, Delta has issued a clear set of guidelines for its customers.
Staff also received extra pay for the additional trips that they took on.
But the thank-you gift has not been completely well-received. In fact, according to the Delta organizing committee of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, it is simply not enough. They said that it “just isn’t going to cut it.” The organization is currently trying to unionize Delta flight attendants.
Photo: Markus Mainka | Shutterstock
The impact of the outage
The outage had cost the airline approximately $500 according to Bastian. Speaking to CNBC’s Squawk Box, he said:
“It was terrible. Apologies again to our customers, our people. It was just a really, really tough situation. Microsoft and CrowdStrike – and we are heavy with both, we are by far the heaviest in the industry with both and so we got hit the hardest in terms of the recovery capability.”
This cost us a half a billion dollars. We have no choice [but to file a lawsuit], over the period of five days, between not just the lost revenue but the tens and millions of dollars in compensation and hotels. We did everything we could to take care of our customers.”
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The airline is said to have suffered losses ranging from $350-500 million.
While all three major US carriers (United, American, and Delta) suffered, Delta was by far the biggest hit. For instance, on Monday, July 22, day 4 of the disruption, Delta Air Lines canceled approximately 30% of its flights, according to Forbes. United and American canceled just 2% of theirs.
Photo: fivetonine | Shutterstock
Delta Air Lines soon regained control of the situation, though. On Wednesday July 24, only 54 flights were cancelled while competitors suffered more. American Airlines for example canceled 123 flights.
