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.
72 comments on “Delta Seems to Have Learned Nothing From Southwest’s 2022 Meltdown”
Tim Dunn’s comments sure to follow..
You stole my thunder.
Tim is too busy being Ed’s valet at the games
Don’t worry, Tim will show up soon.
Everyone stop it. I am sick of comments on every post talking about a commenter who nobody actually wants to hear from. I am going to start deleting comments that reference this, so please don’t make me have to do it. Just stop posting these.
I really wish there was a like button so I could upvote this comment, Cranky. The comments about Tim Dunn are insanely annoying. Not just on this site, though of course that’s not your problem to worry about.
Hubris will be this carrier’s downfall. Too
Much focus on flash, and not enough on the boring-but-critical parts. It’s a Potemkin village, and it only takes a gentle breeze like a Crowdstrike update to level it.
Bastian’s leaving for France in the middle of it all, is an incredible unforced error. People are quick to carry his water, but a true leader would’ve stayed in the trenches with his people. The working conditions were still abysmal.
If memory serves, this is also the 3rd(?) IT meltdown under the current CIO.
Not what one might expect from a “premium” airline.
Agree on the hubris and arrogance.
This incident showed that DL is all talk about its reliability and service and no action. Claiming to have a better product than competitors isn’t just about promoting the latest wine list for Delta ONE, it’s about recovering from IRROPS events (which happen ALL THE TIME) and not letting them cascade. No airline is perfect, but Delta took an operational meltdown that could have been a PR/customer service windfall (“Look at how well/generously Delta took care of its stranded passengers compared to how Southwest did,” could have been the headlines) and completely fumbled from a corporate PR / customer service side. Such a wasted opportunity.
That said, I’m not trying to dump on Delta and I don’t think this will have too much in the way of lasting effects for Delta unless it has a few more incidents like this in the near future. It simply has more than enough political power and customer goodwill to burn, so this will probably just be a short term blip for it.
Emirates wine lists makes the Delta wine list look like a cheap sample of childrens juice boxes.
Delta was never going to be a real premium carrier for one reason and one reason only;
This is an airline that cares about **looking** good, while the real premium carriers genuinely care about being good.
They can’t run flights on time, and they can’t even have a competitive wine list.
Delta has to turn a profit where the ME airlines can rely on their state benefactors. Premium is relative on the domestic side. People don’t want to pay the price for the caviar or expensive champaign. Most just want extra space to work and a decent meal.
I’m not sure what else you call a virus that originated in a lab in China. Not even sure why you would even include that in your article
lol you can call it COVID-19 or the coronavirus, like its actual names
Operational performance would be an interesting topic by cranky at some point.
I’m not sure I’ve seen any post pandemic analysis about block padding among the US3 post covid and how much each carrier is still using it to pump up their ops statistics.
This feels a lot like the 2017 meltdown that Delta had. Didn’t they learn from that? https://money.cnn.com/2017/04/10/news/companies/delta-meltdown-what-went-wrong/index.html
Stubborn Delta management admitting mistakes and learning from them?
Hhahahahhahahahh you’re dreaming.
Fool me once (2017), shame on you. Fool me twice (2024), shame on me.
wasn’t there a big one more recent around the holidays for Delta circa 2021/2022? Not as bad as their thunderstorm meltdown in 2017, sure… but they had some recent post-covid meltdowns too
This felt exponentially worse than the previous two events.
Doesn’t it seem like Delta’s meltdown received substantially less media coverage than Southwest’s?
Is that due to a difference of scale (how many flights did Delta cancel compared to Southwest)? Is it solely due to timing as Southwest’s was during the much discussed holiday travel season? Or is Delta getting an undeserved “pass” from much of the media?
Fortunately (for Delta), much of the media coverage was focused on the Crowdstrike outage for the first couple days which impacted everything from airlines to banks to the local coffee shop. Friday’s coverage was on the Crowdstrike “worldwide IT meltdown” and then the national media largely went home for the weekend. Then there was a major shakeup in the US presidential race on Sunday, which further diverted attention from Delta’s meltdown.
Southwest’s meltdown occurred during the Christmas travel rush, which makes for compelling media coverage–“I can’t get home for Christmas!” It also happened during a slow news cycle; it was a new, fresh, dramatic story rather than another “year in review” package.
Well said. However since the Biden interview on ABC, more & more people have been ignoring what the talking heads have to say.
Very true, good points.
Still curious about scale, as in the # of DL cancellations by day compared to (a) other airlines and (b) the WN holiday meltdown.
Bill – I can help with that.
On Friday, the day of the outage, Delta canceled 1,854 flights, United 910, American 543, and Southwest 5. (I’ll stop including Southwest now) On Saturday, Delta canceled 1,510 flights, United 456, American 76.
On Sunday, Delta canceled 1,717 flights, United 257, American 138.
On Monday, Delta canceled 1,391 flights, United 194, American 204.
On Tuesday, Delta canceled 556 flights, United 128, American 336.
Most of those cancels were weather/northeast garbage after the weekend.
During the Southwest meltdown, Southwest canceled 3,060 flights on Dec 26, its worst day.
Delta got lucky because Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and Kamala Harris became the de facto nominee was the bigger story.
Delta spent $347 million on advertising last year. They don’t bite the hand that feeds them. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1409091/delta-airlines-ad-spend/#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20Delta%20Airlines%20%2D%20an,constituting%20a%2015%20percent%20increase.
SW also spends ad money, it’s not that far behind, there’s no conspiracy theory there.
Bill – I think it’s the nature of the holiday season that Southwest was the gift that just keeps on giving. There’s too much else going on right now, so it gets drowned out.
Just another example of Delta’s mindset. First they screwed most of their loyal flyers, expecting them to follow the path of using a Delta AMEX for everything and flying Delta more to obtain a tier. Now this.
Someone should make a case study for business students on what not to do to drive your business forward.
I am so so glad it is acceptable to talk about the ego, hubris, and stubbornness that is Delta Airlines management.
They drank the kool-aid. As much as we like to tease and joke about Tim Dunn, he represents all the suckers and yes-men at HQ well. Tim Dunn, like management, thought they were just soooo perfect…
Not sure if anyone here is a FF on DL, but under Ed the airline has gotten worse and worse. The operation isn’t what it used to be, the Skypesos program is insulting, the planes have gotten filthier, the employees are slacking off more.
Doesn’t help that Ed Bastian fired some of the people responsible for making Delta so great in the first place like Steve Gorman, Gil West, and Bill Lentsch.
AA as an airline performed incredibly well in 2013-2015 due to all those customers from UA/DL fleeing those carriers after the post-merger entities gave a middle finger to customers. I think it’s safe to say that this is UALs decade Bye bye Nike of the sky, nice knowing you while it lasted.
I’d be genuinely curious to hear you make your case for Lentsch. I was never a fan.
Bill Lentsch was an incredibly smart man and very well liked by Delta employees and that was a for a reason, he cared. He cared about the processes, and cared about the people. Delta employees at MSP loved him and remembered every single one of their names, all of them.
Rumour is that Ed Bastian pushed him out, perhaps because he did such a great job that he was next in line for Eds job.
Remember, Ed Bastian got passed over for CEO in favour of the far better Richard Anderson. And with the benefit of hindsight, I think we know why now.
I think Delta is still the best of the big three right now. But, it’s not like it was when Richard Anderson retired and they were the best by far.
United has gotten much better. They were hampered by Jeff Smisek. Once he was gone, they got better.
AA is an airline I like to avoid. No AVOD, tighter seats, and rude uncaring FAs makes them the airline to avoid.
But, this meltdown is going hurt Delta. It was completely unacceptable and I hope the Feds come down hard on them.
Fair enough, and thanks. I always found him condescending and one of those people who talked a lot but did little of substance (DL is lousy with that type). Perception is everything, I suppose.
you do realize that this is 2024 and AA’s own executives said that AA’s own bad decisions will cost it $1.5 billion in revenue.
Delta has been the biggest beneficiary of AA’s mistakes; DL in NYC, BOS and LAX would not be what they are now if it weren’t for AA’s mistakes.
and data vs. bias and opinion arguably shows that DL is a far better airline compared to its competition that it was 10 or 15 years ago when Bastian took over.
Despite the hysteria, Delta’s trajectory is not changed by 4 bad days which happened to be a shorter meltdown than UA In June 2023 or WN in December 2022
Delta was never good, Timbo. It’s all Jedi Mind Tricks and misdirection. The planes are decrepit, the FAs are graduates of the Nurse Rached Charm School, and the ground ops people regard acknowledging you when you’re inirrops distress as an inconvenience for them. That’s what makes your cheerleading for them so disturbing to me; you repeatedly try to defend the indefensible.
Tim Dunn, I’m the one who mentioned to you how AA has been permanently stained by their network + sales and distribution changes.
Tim Dunn, you clearly don’t know anyone at Virginia Avenue. Ed Bastian has ruined the airline, but he’s still so lucky to have the foundations of what Richard Anderson built.
I usually fly AA, but need to speak up for Delta. They are a better airline to fly now than in the past. They traditionally run a reliable airline and will pay to keep paxs from being bumped. Their gate agents and FAs are compentent and friendly. Delta’s skymiles has been devalued, but so has AA and UA’s program. With high demand for air travel, no reason to discount it with points.
Was in T2 at SFO Saturday the 27th and there were hundreds of bags lined up against the walls. Maybe operationaly settled, but the luggage is still lost.
All of the smartest, most educated consumers have shown that they only want to fly on an airline that’s cocky and arrogant and dominates their customers like the little ham sandwich fetish slaves they are. Delta would not have record-breaking profits that far surpass the rest of the industry if it showed any appreciation or compassion for their dirty betas that whip out their Amex Platinums whenever daddy Ed commands them to.
Delta has shown that they are as incompetent as Southwest. This is not a surprise.
At some point, you’d think that all of the C-level suite execs would learn that an airline’s job is to get customers from point A to point B, safely and on time. The customer chooses airline XYZ for a variety of reasons, but they want to get there regardless. They have things to do. Their time is collectively more valuable than your balance sheet.
IRROPS happen. They’ll remember your airline if you somehow got them there reasonably close to on time, and they will remember you when you dont.
From my experience on DL flights and dealing with their customer service, everyone employed at the Widget is a sadistic, arrogant low-life. They not only attract these examples of human garbage, they actively recruit them. If you work for them and ate reading this, I do not apologize. You are filth.
Excuse you sir. The most profitable airline in this history of mankind only hires Premium™ filth that has passed rigorous evaluation in dishing out Premium™ arrogance.
I was flying on Black Friday (19 July) LGA-BNA on Delta’s ~8 pm departure, last n/s of the day on that route. The meltdown began in the early morning hours and the rest of the day was a crapshoot: the one remaining alternate (earlier) n/s kept getting posted as available for 1) $0, 2) $45, 3) $837, then back to $45, and so on, and there was no way to grab it at any price. It was like a casino on the app — and the house always wins. I live in both cities, so I had somewhere to sleep if the worst happened, so I stuck with the original flight, which did ultimately get off the ground ~4 hours late. I was fortunate. As I walked through LGA the cots were already being rolled out.
Unfortunately, in 2024 this kind of thing is just going to happen. We are going to have to accept it.
When airlines run 90+ load factors, and with the FAA rest rules for crews, and the lack of actual personnel of staff to deal with IRROPS, these meltdowns are unavoidable.
All these airline see it’s cheaper to dump staff and cut costs, then say you’re sorry when it falls apart during a busy time. There isn’t enough competition to push them to act differently.
There is plenty of capacity to major leisure destinations. Outside of that, who else are fliers going to choose? The same service and risks of being screwed over by a different airline. Different tail same exact issues.
Not apologizing for DL, but I feel like this could happen to any other airline. None of them will learn anything from anything. They would rather pay crazy reimbursement to passengers and crippling fine to the government than investing a single dollar to plan B for meltdown.
On another note, wasn’t there some crazy rain a few months back in Dubai and EK was a mess for a few days? I am curious how did EK recovery effort go and how is it different from a US airline meltdown. European airlines have all the strikes and things going all the time, partial meltdown is provably their way of life.
It’s a tradeoff for airlines. The leaner they run with high load factors, they can turn a profit in a business that struggles to make single digit (or low double digit) profit margins. Flying is largely a comodity product and people shop a pot based on price. Few airlines can profitably compete if the have to build significant resiliency into their system for a meltdown that may occur once every couple years.
You could have stopped right here
“We don?t have a full post-mortem on what happened at Delta”
There have been more comments about what went wrong and nearly all missed the mark.
First, Delta flies more mainline flights than any other airline than Southwest. Feel free to tell us the percentage of flights that Delta cancelled compared to Southwest – and it was a small fraction.
Second, Delta got its operation back on track in 2 days faster than Southwest did after its IT meltdown or United did after its EWR oversheduling-induced meltdown of June 2023.
Third, Delta has far more in-house technology than any other airline including the only US carrier (and one of the few in the world) CRS. Delta made the decision years ago to not ditch Deltamatic for a global GDS partition but has more customized in-house software as a result than any other US airline. The added cost compared to UA – which still cxld over 1500 flights over 2 days.
Is Delta having some serious conversations with Microsoft about their architecture which Delta unwaveringly trusted to allow CrowdStrike to do what no one could have imagined? You better believe it.
Will Delta change the way it allows CrowdStrike and other vendors that have deep access to DL systems? You better believe it and so will a whole lot of other companies.
This is an aviation discussion site but there are huge implications for what happened a week ago to Microsoft systems.
Delta’s operational stats year to date are still better than most of the industry even after this incident. Delta had a huge well of strong operational performance built up that won’t be destroyed by an awful extended weekend.
and, from a financial standpoint, the impact to DL will be far less than what AA and UA will spend to settle with their flight attendants or, if those two airlines choose not to settle in 2024, the negative impact those workgroups will have.
and, lest we forget, DL intended to have a big media splash of some sort on the Monday following start of the meltdown and obviously cancelled it.
Yes, Delta loves to compete and I strongly suspect that DL will be back with another announcement that has far more to do with the 14 new widebodies that DL is supposed to receive in 2024 and more than a dozen more in 2025, far in excess of planned 767 retirements or what any other US airline is receiving.
Other airlines including DL have had IT and operational meltdowns and not only survived them but kept growing after them.
In the context of Delta’s growth from the 6th largest US airline in 1978 to the largest airline in the world by revenue now, this is a bad episode but will do little to stop DL’s further growth.
Defending the indefensible yet again. Baghdad Bob translated to Atlanta.
Tim, you conveniently ignore how a few months ago Delta fired a lot of their experienced IT people and moved that offshore
Great job Ed Bastian…
Stop ragging on Delta. They are busy working on their merger with Western Airlines still I assume. I know any day now they will finally give me my Western miles. I’ve waited 37 years, but you all expect them to handle a melt down in one weekend…….Geez!
(Above was all in jest, but yes, it really has been 37 years and I’ve never gotten those Western miles.)
You left out something about the future of Delta post-meltdown and that is this may be the final straw that pushes flight attendants to unionize. The company has aggressively fought unionization for a long time but AFA has been slowly building support for it. Just a few weeks ago was the Palestine flag fiasco that has really perturbed a lot of flight attendants. But this fiasco may just be the straw that breaks the camels back. If they do, that means a lot more costs for Delta that they will have to account for which means they’ll have to make some very critical decisions that will affect customers. This was a self-inflicted wound that is going to reverberate for quite some time in ways we won’t even realize.
100%
When Bastian finds himself across the table from Sarah Nelson, he can look back at this and remember how he got there.
I am fascinated that these Big Airline meltdowns keep occurring. Obviously, computers enable complex operations to do remarkable things, but they also enable remarkable meltdowns when the “unexpected” or unusual occurs. I would think airlines would spend TONS of time and money studying how to avoid and manage operational meltdowns. It would obviously be time and money well spent (ask Southwest). There are obviously known strategies and techniques to isolate problems and avoid disaster. Why aren’t they always implemented? A thoughtful study of this phenomenon would be very interesting and useful.
Good questions. I wonder how much the loss of institutional knowledge since 2019 hurt DLs recovery this time.
Airlines in the summer have load factors in the 90% level which makes accommodation challenging. Airlines during peak summer travel demand aren’t going to keep planes or crew from being deployed and generating revenue. These meltdowns are the cost of business in transporting a billion paxs a year at a reasonable cost. If you stripped out the money made from credit cards, airlines lose money flying.
Obviously, reaccommodation is tough when your load factor is high. Which is another reason why you want to AVOID the prolonged meltdown in the first place. Delta didn’t NEED to meltdown due to Crowdstrike. Their competitors got on their feet fairly quickly. Delta didn’t. Why? What prevented them from getting their act together like AA and UA did, and can they now implement those more successful strategies?
You forget this is the THIRD TIME IN THE LAST EIGHT YEARS Delta has has this same exact problem, January 2016 and April 2017. Delta knows this is an issue and has had pelnty of time to correct. Forget Southwest, Delta has learned nothing from their own past mistakes.
Don’t forget August 2016
Frontier, Spirit, Sun Country, and other smaller carriers do not seem to have these issues.
Never forget the moment in time when DL was at its peak cockiness around 2015-2016. They wanted higher reimbursements for accommodating other airlines’ IROP passengers, because you know, ‘on-time machine’ and all that. AA wisely stood up to that very miscalculated hubris and the interline agreement was cancelled. Not just a few months later DL had yet another epic IT meltdown in the middle of summer and few places to accommodate its passengers.
The arrogance of this company is unbelievable, and this is just the latest example in all its glory.
A couple of thoughts:
I’ve observed that many people who write comments in airline and travel blogs seem to derive pleasure from the struggles of particular carriers. The German word for that trait is “schadenfreude”. It’s sad that such a nice sounding word describes such a questionable trait. I once had a teacher whose theory regarding schadenfreude makes sense. He believed it comes from a sense of relief that he or she (or his or her favorite airline) isn’t struggling.
There’s never been a human endeavor that’s been perfect 100% of the time.
Based on Tom Dunn’s above comment (and others over the years), I’ve finally come to the realization that he’s a master of the non sequitur. I’m not trying to pick on Tim. And, to that point, I do think that some of the excoriation he’s gotten on other sites has been a bit unfair – and another manifestation of schadenfreude.
Every airline has gone through this type of meltdown. Delta and Southwest just happen to be the last two.
I think the larger take away is that anytime a critical component of an airline is jeopardized, airlines struggle to get the pieces back in place. Yes, in this circumstance, Delta struggled relative to everyone else, but in other situations, it was other airlines.
Unfortunately, when something like this happens, there is no longer much slack in the industry to help alleviate the situation.
It does highlight the logistical complexities of the airline industry.
The logical failure of the argument that Delta learned nothing from the WN IT failure stems from a lack of understanding of what actually went wrong w/ DL’s IT and why it took Delta 2 more days to get its operation back on track than UA – but still faster than WN took and also faster than UA took to stabilize its operation after its June 2023 meltdown that had its root in EWR overscheduling.
Airlines do not all have the same IT and there is absolutely no evidence that DL didn’t spend money on IT as many have suggested or that DL didn’t learn from its own or other airline previous IT failures.
The real issue that few here understand yet alone are discussing is that Microsoft was forced, as part of its agreement with the EU to not be blocked from the European market, to allow non-Microsoft vendors access to the most basic and deepest parts of the Microsoft operating system and Microsoft could not and cannot do anything to stop that access.
The heat of the moment is never a good time for rational thinking but there are and will be very hard discussions about how Microsoft extricates itself from this situation which was caused by CrowdStrike. It is a given that CrowdStrike will pay a huge price but this is all a black eye that the US accepted EU conditions that hurt US companies because of a Microsoft-EU agreement.
If the EU wants to make sure that EU companies have multiple options for back end vendors besides Microsoft, then let their businesses suffer when one of those vendors screws up.
But when a cypersecurity “expert” takes down more computers than any other IT failure in history, Microsoft has to put some distance between itself and its vendors.
Delta has to figure out how to put a wall between itself and Microsoft to prevent failures like this from happening. It very likely won’t get discussed here, but DL might be the impetus for a renegotiation of some of the arcane regulations that have reduced the ability of companies to deliver quality products because of regulators in other parts of the world that have no idea of the implications of their decisions.
Delta and Microsoft were tight before; they might become even stronger – and Delta might become a champion for Microsoft with Microsoft’s financial help for the cleanup of this mess.
and the EU is fighting Apple to allow vendors the same access to Apple’s operating system as Microsoft was forced to accept.
This root cause possibility and ramification is potentially interesting (could use a link though to substantiate) but there is still the core issue of DL failing to recover.
Why? The one piece of crew scheduling software supposedly couldn’t handle the backlog and get caught up. I was absolutely shocked by that. As good as Delta has been at running their operation for so many years it was truly shocking to see.
At one point, Delta said they were running five parallel crew tracking systems to get things back on track.
People forget that the airline never stopped operating so the syncing of operations between what a system last “saw” when it went down and what exists now is an enormous undertaking.
DL said that there were more than 1000 systems that had to be brought back online. Crew tracking was the largest piece in the first wave but word was crew tracking was working as soon as Sunday but getting everything synced again was the issue – and then the operations system went down.
And thunderstorms moved through ATL several times during the event even though ATL has had a pretty mild spring and summer compared to other parts of the country – which compounded delays.
As to the comment below, operational meltdowns are messy. Period.
Social media magnifies what took place.
And the notion that other airlines did much better is the sole result of amnesia. The National Guard was called to multiple airports during the WN meltdown; there were equally horrific scenes of passenger difficulties during the UA meltdown.
There are also scenes of trees falling on houses during storms and people being stranded in cars on highways.
Southwest did a pretty good job of recovering from its meltdown and Delta will too. WN’s problem is that its business model needed to be fixed for reasons unrelated to the meltdown while DL’s business model has worked well.
and new reports says that DL has hired a high profile law firm to sue CrowdStrike and Microsoft. Regardless of whatever terms exist, CRWD’s pushing out such fatally flawed code to millions of users is the height of negligence.
Delta can make life very difficult for CrowdStrike and Microsoft, both of which are much larger and richer companies.
Unlike WN which had not invested in IT and UA which overscheduled its key hub, DL made the (flawed) assumption that one of its key vendors was trustworthy.
I expect a settlement that with insurance will cover most if not all of the financial damages that DL suffered.
You have no idea what you are talking about. You can’t keep saying Microsoft as if it’s a magic wand that excuses everything that went wrong.
It’s clear you don’t know anything about IT when you keep dreaming that Delta will have words with Microsoft. Thanks for the hearty laugh.
Have you noticed Microsoft has not even taken a hit from this debacle?
This is not on them. They didn’t install crowdstrike on Delta servers or any servers. This is on Delta IT and only them, just like it is at every other company that went down.
Not that different than when you or I install a piece of software or an app on our phones. You can’t blame the operating system for modifying it with shitty software that you installed.
You may go after crowdstrike, just get in line because everyone else will as well.
Ps. This is completely unrelated to any EU regulation etc. Automatic software updates from a security vendor is what got them. As much as I get why; there is a reason back on the day we turned that off and did them manually after testing them in a QA machine.
feel free to let Delta and its legal firm know that they have no case against Microsoft.
It is Microsoft’s operating system and there are plenty that recognize that Microsoft could have and should have done a better job of protecting its operating system.
It’s up to the negotiation process – hopefully behind the scenes but don’t think that Delta won’t take it public if they have to and to the courts.
The market has spoken; CRWD is already down by another 8% today for 38% month to date. All of the apologies sound good but it doesn’t undo or repair the damage that CrowdStrike caused by their negligence.
Microsoft, of course has very deep pockets. Even if the costs to Delta are $500 million, that is chump change to Microsoft.
I am betting that as long as the DOT continues to breathe down DL’s neck, DL will keep the pressure on MSFT and CRWD until DL’s bills are paid.
and I am betting they will be paid.
Let’s hope that CF is as zealous on the follow-up as he is about asserting that DL didn’t learn anything.
After all, WN blamed itself for its IT meltdown, UA blamed the DOT which did absolutely nothing except perhaps warrant an IT audit, and now DL is going after a private company.
Maybe the blame game has just evolved where it can actually result in monetary damages but there is still a good chance that neither CrowdStrike or Microsoft wants to deal with what far too many foolishly call the incompetent Ed Bastian.
If it’s the EU’s fault for forcing kernel access then why should Microsoft give a large payout to Delta?
I think Cranky’s point was kind of lost here. Yes, Delta had an operational meltdown and the recovery was abysmal. So have other airlines. It just happens.
I work in an operational role for one of the majors. IRROPS are part of airline life. The occasional meltdown is part of airline life. All of us felt for the employees there working in their Operations Center and out on the front line because we have all been there. All the big 4 for the most part doing a great job getting passengers where they’re supposed to be in this enormously complex industry. If you have never worked in airline ops, you have no idea what we deal with day to day to keep things moving, I don’t care how much of an AV geek you are.
However, the way Delta treated the customers caught in the middle of it is what draws ire. Not offering to reimburse people who bought flights on other airlines until the airline was almost put back together (United even ran some extra round trips out of some of their hubs to ATL), stranding the Unaccompanied Minors, and trying to steer the blame narrative to CrowdStrike 5 days later.
Putting it all back together and getting all the passengers who are stuck moving again (and what goodwill compensation/reimbursement is offered) is where Delta really messed up here. Someone mentioned above that this was a missed opportunity with some good PR to counter the bad- and that’s with how they take care of anyone stranded. They just simply didn’t do that, and that I think is the point that a lot of us are missing. (Granted I think we all would’ve reacted a little differently if we weren’t constantly reminded how wonderful Delta is but I digress).
At the end of the day, Delta will alienate some customers but it’s NOT going to bring the ceiling down upon the airline. For the most part, they do a good job at what they’re supposed to do- move people and make money. But again, the big 4 all do that pretty well now.
I’m actually curious on some of the recovery aspects. Was a particular aircraft type (i.e. 717) route / flying pattern easier to recover and why?
Was one hub more easily able to get things back up and going vs another?
Why in the world in 2024 is there not an app the crews can use to message in to appropriate desks/service units as required (maybe there is and it failed as well)?
From a passenger standpoint, I was attempting to help someone rebook via the app and it was next to useless.
Unfortunate things/IRROPs are going to happen. No airline is immune, for sure.
DL has an internal messaging app/system, and it was up and running.
It is complete amnesia that other airlines have not suffered from crew and operations tracking related meltdowns.
Spirit had a fairly spectacular operational meltdown just a year ago.
It is absolutely legitimate to ask what DL learned from its previous operational meltdowns, some of which were IT related.
One of its meltdowns was a result of power problems to its ATL IT systems which is precisely why they moved to cloud-based computing – which failed in this most recent event due to CrowdStrike, a vendor on which nearly all of DL’s systems operated.
DL had over 1000 systems that went down; just because DL said that crew tracking was down, doesn’t mean it was the only operationally critically system that failed.
They got crew tracking back and then the operations system failed during the restart.
There are legitimate questions that DL should be asking about its IT architecture, IT design assumptions, and systems recovery – and those will also be asked by Microsoft and CrowdStrike as part of DL’s request for compensation.
But it is completely wrong to argue that DL didn’t learn anything from its own previous IT systems or from WN’s systems.
As to the notion that DL had a working internal messaging system, it is impossible for humans to immediately replace an IT system that tracks the movement of up to 900 mainline active aircraft and all the associated crews.
Crew tracking systems are absolutely necessary to run modern airline operations.
DL must simply figure out how to keep its crew tracking systems always operating and unable to fail from outside forces whether power systems or other software, and to immediately pick up and keep processing crew movements after even a few minutes of downtime.
Not a single airline in the world has managed to create that kind of system yet.