On July 19, the world learned the name CrowdStrike. That day, the company had uploaded a corrupted update to its clients’ computers that use the Windows operating system, and those computers immediately turned into bricks. This instantly made CrowdStrike the villain of every news article, but as the days went on, it was Delta that took over that role. Now, as Delta’s operations have returned to normal, we can look back and see… what a terrible job this airline did navigating the crisis. It is stunning to see just how little the airline seems to have learned from when Southwest went through something strikingly similar.
Southwestʻs 2022 Meltdown Should Have Set the Tone
With Southwest, it was a different catalyst that kicked things off. On December 20, 2022, a wicked winter storm rolled through the middle of the country, bringing problematic winds and cold temps from Denver to Chicago. Every airline felt the pain, but most recovered as normal. Southwest, on the other hand, just could not get its act together.
Its systems were overwhelmed as they tried to catch up with all of the problems that had popped up during the storm itself. Putting aircraft, crews, and passengers in the same place became impossible. The airline lost track of its crews, and it had to severely curtail its schedule before it could regain any sort of normal function. It took eight long days before it had anything resembling a normal operation.
During this time, the airline went mostly silent as passengers found themselves desperately trying to figure out how to get to their destinations. They were left hung out to dry. Eventually, Southwest apologized, sent out a ton of frequent flier miles, and offered to reimburse for reasonable expenses travelers incurred. That last part didn’t happen until five days after the weather hit, however.
The airline was absolutely dragged through the mud over its poor response. The Department of Transportation fined Southwest $140 million. It took a significant hit at the time, and itʻs not hard to argue that the airline still suffers the demand aftereffects to this day.
As that all unfolded, you would think every airline would have studied Southwest’s response as a textbook example of what NOT to do. So when Delta found itself in a similar situation this month, you would have hoped it would have done better. Somehow, it did not.
Delta Lowers the Bar
Even though CrowdStrike’s faulty update impacted several airlines, nearly all were running fine by the end of the weekend. According to Anuvu data, on Sunday the 22nd, United canceled a hefty 10 percent of flights and Spirit canceled 15 percent, but Delta was at 33 percent, so it was abundantly clear something was uniquely wrong with Delta.
Completion Factor and On-Time Departures During Delta and Southwest Meltdowns
Data via Anuvu
So what did Delta do? It put out regular updates on Friday during the outage, but then it just did one per day on Saturday and Sunday outlining extended waivers and telling people what they couldn’t get reimbursed. And those updates continued to place blame on the IT outage even though this was clearly something bigger. This is exactly what Southwest did with the weather back in 2022.
Meanwhile, Delta continued to make mistakes. As it canceled a third of its operation all weekend-long, it did not offer to reimburse people for having to buy travel on other airlines. It even instituted a ban on unaccompanied minor travel that was later extended through July 23. This makes sense operationally, but the airline just stranded kids. It’s not how this should have gone.
The first communication from CEO Ed Bastian finally came on Sunday afternoon, and it kept talking about this technology failure. Nobody cared. People were stranded in airports, and nobody wants to hear about something that happened two days prior. They just wanted to get on a flight.
The Wrong Tone
A cockiness came through in Delta’s communications. The AP reported that Ed brushed off Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s reminder of what the airline’s responsibilities were:
Bastian said in a video for employees that he told Buttigieg, “You do not need to remind me. I know, because we do our very best, particularly in tough times, taking care of our customers.”
In a Monday update, Delta said this:
“We’ve got everyone around the company working around the clock to get this operation where it needs to be,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a video message to employees on Monday. “Keep taking great care of our customers and each other in the coming days.”
Even simple tweets putting out the airline’s communications found a way to suggest Delta had done a great job taking care of everybody.
I should note that this criticism isnʻt a reflection on Deltaʻs front line. There is no way they could have taken care of everyone well when the airline melted down like that. Itʻs just not humanly possible. For those stuck in the airport or on endless phone holds, this felt like the airlineʻs management was living in an alternate universe where it was patting itself on the back.
And every single time, CrowdStrike was blamed. It called the problem the “CrowdStrike-caused outage,” just like some on the right refer to COVID as the “China Virus.” When people are stuck in an airport, the last thing they want to play is the blame game. They want to hear apologies and then they want to know when it will be fixed. The communication style just clouded the message that things were getting better quicker than they did at Southwest.
It certainly would have helped if the airlineʻs tech worked better to help with rebookings. Delta said that rebooking options were available through electronic channels, but there were many who found that those either did not work at all or the option had disappeared at some point. (If you’re not a subscriber to my Air Show co-host Brian Sumers’s The Airline Observer, you can read about his family’s experience.)
Once the operation got back to normal, Delta had one more parting shot. Finally, on Wednesday, Delta agreed to reimburse travelers for purchasing tickets on other airlines. This happened five days after the initial problem, the same amount of time it took Southwest to roll out the very same thing back in 2022.
This, however, felt more like a strategy. For Delta, the fifth day was the first day its operation was running as normal. That means all those people who could afford to eat the cost of an expensive ticket on another airline will now get reimbursed. But all those people who couldnʻt afford to float another ticket? Well, it sucks to be them.
Now What?
We donʻt have a full post-mortem on what happened at Delta, and I actually expect we wonʻt get one. Delta isnʻt the kind of airline that will just open up the kimono on something like that unless the feds drag it out of them. But we do know that the airline ran into severe issues with its crew scheduling system. It sounds a whole lot like what happened to Southwest.
Honestly, thatʻs not all that interesting to me anyway at this point. Iʻm more curious to find out what impact this will have on Delta going forward. Delta loves to compete, and it thinks itʻs the best. It has proactively made the move to take on Alaska in Seattle and JetBlue in Boston. It competes fiercely with United (and others) in New York along with pretty much everyone in Los Angeles. Thereʻs Sun Country in Minneapolis, and in Atlanta, itʻs hard to say it competes with anyone but Southwest does provide a nice little alternative. Will Delta take a hit?
The timing of this couldnʻt have been worse for the airlineʻs lucrative corporate business. Last week was the massive Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) annual conference. This is where all the airlines wine and dine corporate travel buyers. Itʻs a big deal with more than 5,000 attendees. And did I mention it was in Atlanta this year? Delta has a LOT of apologizing to do to people who didn’t make it as planned. Hopefully it can find the humility to make that happen.
Southwest felt a real impact after the 2022 meltdown, and I expect Delta will feel some real pain as well. It could have softened some of that impact if it had responded differently, but, well, it didnʻt. Now others will try to benefit from the rare Delta misstep.
