Delta Air Lines is finally recovering from one of the worst airline meltdowns that has been experienced in this country. Yet the airline’s public statements have been little more than finger pointing and self-congratulations despite the misery they’re putting both employees and customers through. It’s nearly as bad as Southwest in December 2022, yet they aren’t getting the same level of recriminations and aren’t as generous with customers as Southwest was.
The airline is out with another statement from the CEO and it’s appalling. All other airlines were up and running quickly after the CrowdStrike outage. He still accepts zero responsibility. That shouldn’t be surprising.
For the last decade I’ve flown first class @Delta for every single flight.
Never again.
Y’all just lost a customer for life.
Horrible customer service. Cancelled flights with no reimbursement. No answers from anyone.
RIP, @Delta, you’re dead to me. pic.twitter.com/ln7AJAr0j1
— Jason Helmes (@anymanfitness) July 22, 2024
Delta collapsed. They lost track of crews, and couldn’t assign them to flights. They were making announcements in terminals asking anyone who worked for them that could fly to just show up at gates. Planes were out of position and not getting maintenance. It was a disaster all-around – and one not experienced by their competitors. Yet here’s what Ed Bastian had to say:
Since the CrowdStrike outage late last week, Delta’s team of the best professionals in the business has been working around the clock to restore the reliable, on-time operation you’ve come to know and expect when you fly with us.
- CrowdStrike screwed up
- We fixed it – because we’re “the best professionals in the business” never mind that our team was last in the industry to recover.
While our initial efforts to stabilize the operations were difficult and frustratingly slow and complex, we have made good progress this week and the worst impacts of the CrowdStrike-caused outage are clearly behind us.
- Repeat again that this is CrowdStrike’s fault, not our fault.
Delays and cancellations were down 50% Tuesday compared to Monday, and we anticipate cancellations Wednesday to be minimal. Thursday is expected to be a normal day, with the airline fully recovered and operating at a traditional level of reliability.
- After 5 days of misery things have stabilized. I called it a day ago when cancellations were still abysmal.
I know the last few days have been difficult. To our customers who were impacted, I want to thank you for your patience and apologize again for the disruption to your travel.
- Finally an ‘I’m sorry’
- But only to a limited group of people
- It’s an apology ‘again’ even though there really hasn’t been a clear I’m sorry – certainly never an I’m sorry that accepts fault
- And here it comes only after blaming someone else.
We understand how important travel is in your lives, and we remain committed to taking care of those whose flights may still be impacted, with meals, hotel accommodations and ground transportation offered through vouchers and reimbursements. We’re also providing impacted customers with Delta SkyMiles and travel vouchers as a further gesture of apology.
- We were unwilling to put people on other airlines
- There are reports from passengers refused hotel and meal vouchers
- A previous Delta email made clear they wouldn’t cover non-refundable travel plans that were missed, like hotels. That’s even when the hotels were booked through Delta, Delta wouldn’t refund the booking and give up the commission.
- SkyMiles compensation has been as low as 4,000 points.
My buddy is there
He sent me this photo
said he’s 97% sure this lady just peed on floor while waiting 7 hours in line for customer service pic.twitter.com/m5NotJjjTK— Alan K (@itsalankline) July 22, 2024
Delta was telling customers it would take 17 to 20 hours to reach customer service. It made Delta look bad in social media. Then they just stopped telling customers what the wait times would be.
The airline directed everyone to their website and app for updates and rebooking, but those failed. Even where seats were available, customers couldn’t grab them. With so many displaced passengers hitting their systems so hard for help, those systems failed too. As one software engineer correspondent tells me, this is called a “thundering herd” problem.
All these clients have been trying to talk to a server for a long time, couldn’t and so they all have a lot to say when it comes back. The very act of the server acknowledging all those clients – let alone actually doing the calculations or getting the information the client wants – can take the server down again. In practice, your own trusted clients are DDoSing you!
Delta has had major IT outages in the past, and has recovered poorly. They’ve promised to fix things so that it never happens again, but they don’t. They even let IT staff go this past fall.
Delta vs. United in Minneapolis. And I picked the wrong team, my friends. pic.twitter.com/1FibWqXiMC
— Brian Brenberg (@BrianBrenberg) July 22, 2024
Fixing airline systems that are fundamentally broken is really hard. It’s tough to “self-break” systems and self-test, the way that Netflex pioneered with Chaos Monkey. If a customer loses access to streaming briefly while the system “randomly terminat[es] instances in production to ensure that engineers implement their services to be resilient to instance failures” the consequences are much more modest than if an airline does it.
Major IT problems can be tough to identify and troubleshoot in advance because they show up when there is a lot of traffic, under severe stress, with millions of people trying to do things at once that testers may not think of or combine together.
There’s tremendous humility needed here but Delta is the least humble airline. Overall they have been marginally better than competitors for years, with somewhat more reliable operations and friendlier flight crews. While they have their flaws – business class across the Atlantic on workhorse Boeing 767s actually lags the inflight product of United and American – they’ve built a brand by exaggerating their prowess for a very long time. They promote it both to customers and employees. At some level they even believe their own PR and have become too insular.
Delta keeps deflecting responsibility because they are corporately unable to accept it, and that’s also a big reason why they’re so vulnerable to continued problems. When Delta melts down they’re unable to recover as well as airlines that don’t think they’re above melting down.
I personally experienced and was stranded in both of these airline meltdowns, both while traveling with a child.
I can assure you this episode was actually worse than Southwest because with Delta, IF you happened to get a hold of customer service representative (as I did through one of their chatbots, two days after my cancellation), they twice refused (seriously; as in flat “no”) to specific and simple no-cost solution-oriented suggestions to make accommodations or to improve my situation.
Anyone who has dealt with Delta over the last two years can attest this has been their go-to customer service approach for some time; this meltdown just has exposed it.
The disconnect between corporate executives and customers is not exclusive to Delta, but if the Delta board learns anything from this debacle, it’s to can these clowns and get leadership who actually can relate to the customers they are serving (which, to your point, these public statements of self-congratulations from their CEO are completely out of touch with reality). I honestly can’t believe that any real human in charge at Delta has experienced how condescending and exhausting and revolting their customer service is firsthand, because if they did actually experience it for themselves, they wouldn’t stand for it. (And then probably be labeled a cynical Karen and zip-tied off a plane).
The most frustrating thing to reconcile is this this is a problem they brought onto themselves, because it IS ultimately about money.
Delta customers DO pay more than they would pay to fly low-costers like Southwest, or Spirit, or Frontier, etc. — and they pay even more within Delta’s own tiered stratifications (as you have noted in other posts, re: Sky Club access etc.)— with the implied promise that customers will not be treated like horse meat.
My personal delay through this nightmare got me home within three days (thanks only to my own hard work) — but it’s been 4+ days since the Delta robot held my place in line “due to their higher than normal call volume” (do they even have a recorded message that says anything other than that?), and I’m still waiting for that return call.
Delta deserves every bit of bad press they get for this. Their leadership is working very hard to earn it.
I had 5 flights cancelled in Atlanta. My colleague who travelled with me received her luggage in Harrisburg. It’s the end of my business trip and I still don’t have my luggage. I told them multiple times I have chronic meds in there that must be taken daily. I had enough for days on me but not the whole trip. So I’m super sick. My bag is 20 minutes from me but they don’t send it. We slept at the airport. It was and is extremely traumatising. It was a business trip and had to shop at Walmart. Imagine a whole trip without your stuff. United didn’t have this situation. I have become physically ill from not having my stuff, I looked so unprofessional and spent over 500 dollars to get the basics. The emotional trauma had such an impact that I cried in front of my director. I’ve followed up 10 times and every second person tries but no results.
24 hours at Atlanta, sleeping as two women alone on the airport, having flight after flight cancelled and 7 days without luggage and a lifetime of trauma. And hopefully the repercussions of abruptly going off meds doesn’t have long term impact on me. United gave us instant tickets during the same incident
@Tom R–I completely agree that DL pads its block times, ehic accounts for a lot of its supposed “on time” performance. Great point.
Gary, I think your analysis here is spot on. DL’s recovery is slower than its competitors and it would be good to know why.
At least the CEO fly Delta one to Paris and left everyone hanging
To add insult to injury, the ceo left in the middle of the crisis to attend a sporting event. He should have been there figuring out why thrme issue persisted and if someone needs to be let go. This arrogant action actually illustrates that HE might be the one who needs to go.
Tim…your statement supports the exact thing the article is saying…you tried to say the other airlines recovered faster in past years with similar issues. That’s the point…when u see other airlines have had severe issues, you better be proactive to head it off, not reactive. And i don’t know what day u posted about UA’s ceo flying off to his co home, but ed flew off to the olympics in the middle of it. So…..not really a good look.
Ed Bastian is all about show and no substance. His preflight announcements are pompous drivel. A few years go, when they changed the flight attendant uniforms and promoted the designer heavily, I thought they were getting ready to merge with Hawaiian. He’s taken a good airline and gradually weakened it.
Customers understand that mistakes happen and can be forgiving.
Bastian jetting to Paris to hobknob as a corporate sponsor, while delegating the hard work of recovering from “one of the worst airline meltdowns that has been experienced in this country” to others, is not a mistake. That’s how out of touch this leadership is with the impact of what happened.
Beyond these optics to the rest of us, that border on sociopathy, this just shows how completely the board of directors views this past week: “This is how we will treat our loyal customers.”
But, hey, for your troubles, here’s a (maybe) 25% off coupon on your next flight. (Wow. A whole 10,000 miles.)
I’ve had a lot of corporate experience, and rarely do I suggest “that person needs to be fired!” — because mistakes do happen. But we’re supposed to learn from them.
I’ve certainly learned some things — like what a bunch of groupthink pr–ks these people are.
Don’t pause your own vacations to clean up your mess — even remotely the way you’ve upended everybody else’s lives.
Seriously, who the F is this guy.
We were victims too. 2 nights in Atlanta hotels after getting home from our Europe vacation was the last thing we wanted to do. We got canceled. We got delayed and then get this: We got on a 5 o’clock flight back to San Antonio on Sunday the 21st while we were walking down the gangway we canceled our back up plan on Southwest. After we were seated and pushing back, the pilot says “sorry folks we just exceeded our allotted airtime due to FAA regulations. We will have to go back to the gate and deplane all passengers. everyone has to go to customer service to rebook!” People actually started crying. How appalling is that? I want to be part of a class action lawsuit against Delta. It was awful for my 84-year-old husband as we were running around on the Atlanta sky train train from terminal A to terminal B back to terminal T trying to get to another airline trying to get to another flight only to have to get a standby ticket. The first night we luckily got a room at the Renaissance the second night couldn’t find any rooms so we had to settle for a dump it seemed right by a runway. Not only did the room shake after every take off, we could hear a pimp talking to his ho about what she owed him. I am not kidding! I thought they were gonna break into our room After 4 hours of no sleep there we got up and we got out and we went to the airport at 5 o’clock in the morning trying to get on standby once again. When our names were called as standby #’s 20 and 21, on an 8:10 Am flight, I cried walking down the runway.
I will NEVER fly Delta again.
Delta has been in decline since Bastien took the top job. He has exploited the ” the best of of a bad bunch” to cater to the stock price, the only kpi that seems to matter. It’s too bad, I was a strong advocate for them, but no more. They have treated all customers below diamond status with disdain and now they will pay the price. It will be a slow long road back for the person who should replace Bastien.
Until citizens UNITE and stop doing business with said business until they resolve their issues and customer service, this will continue. Plain and simple. A little sacrifice and perseverance on an united front will work in the corporate.
Finally / pp are realizing that delta should not be the airline of choice! My reckoning was when after a management interview, the HR person (Cheryl) stated she had “a highly tuned gaydor!” She then tried to control the situation by stating “this stays in this room.”
When I told my boss – he dismissed my concern by saying “she is known to say inappropriate things!!!”
Thereafter – Cheryl made it her mission to get me out of delta. One of the best days of my life –
I had much the same experience this past week as most commenters here. 14 hrs to make a 3 hr trip. Least I was able to get there in the same 24 hr period. 5.5 hours on hold with the medallion line while waiting in line to get into a Sky Club to try and get help. While spending hours in Terminal A at Delta’s HQ airport it seemed like staffing levels were normal for a Sunday afternoon. I saw very few ‘red coats’ and absolutely NO sr. management. The gate agents, while doing their best, were going about business as usual and being let to go home when their shift was over. Food vendors were running out of food and closing down at normal times. I had an exchange with one flight attendant and her comment was ‘look around, if you haven’t noticed its not been a good time for us either” my response of ‘look around…. I see thousands of people here who paid Delta millions of dollars for a service they are not getting’ set her off.
The absolute lack of taking responsibility by Delta is what is appalling. The arrogance of Ed Bastian is trickling down and beginning to infect the organization as a whole. He is a numbers only guy and has never been customer focused. It shows.
Just left Atlanta yesterday, where I attended the GBTA(Global Business Travel Association) convention. Delta was there and they were embarrassed, I heard way too many stories of taking 12-15 hours to get from NYC to Atlanta. The sad part for them is the convention is for travel buyers that represent over 2 billion in spend. Bad optics. Although my early flight on Sunday the 21st was canceled on United, I was able to get another later flight that same day and my return yesterday on United was perfect. The flights were completely full because of all the people that were on Delta switching, Delta would not even give them a credit for the flights, they had to buy new tickets. Complete fail for Delta, privately one of the senior people admitted this will cost them more than $500,000,000 in fines and lost revenue with loyal customers not willing to fly Delta now.
I honestly think what needs to happen here is there needs to be a Major over-haul of failing airline companies,which means fire all the Shady idiots that are choosing to screw over customers and at the same time screwing over the airline company as well with not doing there jobs properly because they choose to not care at all
After spending over 7 hours in their “customer service” line (while chatting with their useless customer care representatives who could do nothing to help me), I found out that Delta wasn’t going to take responsibility for canceling my flight to Florida (leaving me stranded in Seattle). They weren’t going to pay me for my non-refundable cruise, nor for my non-refundable hotel for the night before the cruise, nor for my expensive airport food that I had to order while waiting for a flight back to Eugene, nor for a rental car so that I could drive back to Eugene, and they were even going to deduct the cost of the flight from Eugene to Seattle and back again from the refund of my trip cost (because I had, after all… per their customer care rep… taken the first leg of my flight to Florida). Honestly, what they did to me and what they’ve continued to do to all of their customers should be considered criminal. They’ve stolen from me. And they don’t care how I feel about it. I wanted to talk to their “customer care” rep about refunding and compensating me for all of the above but Delta has zero desire to make things right with me and with all of the other costumers who are negatively impacted by Delta’s mess. I hope that the government steps in and forces Delta to do the right thing. Either that or a smart attorney takes pity on us all and files suit against the airline so that we can all be compensated justly.
In the interests of full disclosure I was not flying during the ‘melt down’ period. If I had I may have felt differently. I have been flying with Delta for years. For myself and my Family Delta are the best commercial airline out there. Every interaction I have with Delta from Customer Service, Check in Lounge t Crew has been professional and courteous with a positive resolution. I would never fly Southwest regardless how cheap or convenient some of the routes are…Jet Blue has been in rapid decline in recent years. ..cancelations and extended delays are an everyday occurrence. UA and AA are average at best. Granted Delta’s disruption lasted longer than other counterparts but we’re they more dependent on CrowdStrike than other airlines..crew scheduling in particular? What is shocking for me is how one mistake by one company ie Crowdstrike could affect so many industries for so long?
As a retired DAL F/A (many decades) , I can assure you Delta never took responsibility for anything negative. “We are the best. We are family.”Yada Yada Yada. For years Delta had the worst computer system of ALL the airlines. They remained way behind of all airlines on pretty much everything. I’ll never forget what f/a’s from other airlines could do regarding schedules, etc. on line. We had to manually submit pretty much everything on paper. Delta, it’s the 21st Century
Take note. Folks don’t put up with crap anymore. Take the high road & for once admit you do alot wrong. Americans are not stupid.
At that time we were still doing
A lot of people here in the comments missing the bigger picture.
Was this an enormous failure of biblical proportions? Absolutely?
Did executive level staff members act any different to normal? Not at all.
This is the reality of corporate leadership these days unfortunately. I work in corporate IT and it’s common for the execs to parrot the company line.
End-stage capitalism inevitably means gaslighting your customers. Your bonus as an exec depends on two things:
1. Ever-increasing share prices (profit is merely a function of sales – expenditure).
2. Customer sentiment (which is where the gaslighting comes in).
To gain their bonus, they have to be seen to increase profits. I’m a market with “headwinds” (read, can’t put costs up any more as customers can’t afford it) then the only option is cost-cutting. Unfortunately, we passed the limit of being able to do this without harming customer sentiment several years ago.
The result will always be that customers suffer, and execs will dine out on brand loyalty and nostalgia until people vote with their feet and expose their lies.
No customers are pretty hard for execs to hide from shareholders after all.
I have seven upcoming work trips booked. Spent most of yesterday morning rebooking on another airline. (Just book two months out) My wife just canceled her purple Amex Delta reserve card. I guess sitting in a terminal for three days tends to conflict with the willingness to pay a $650 annual fee.
The US treasury should really ask for Delta’s share of our taxes back. They used it for profiteering and clearly not for securing themselves as a critical infrastructure company.
Delta is (and has been) a trash airline.
Ive been in the business for 37 years. Delta has ALWAYS had an arrogance about them, especially when they seem to be doing well. Across the board, there is an arrogance displayed towards any unfortunate circumstances with their competitors. Well here we are. One would think a little humble pie would be in order, yet they pretty much double down on blaming others. For all of you running to Delta because you thought they were so much better, I hope you’re happy.
I’m glad I was flying Southwest the morning of the melt down, out of date software for the win!.
However, I guess I look at how people handled the issue differently. Delta dropped the ball,no question- they have a lot of explaining to do Had a similar issue when I was stuck in Seattle for 2 days, following the Alaska Airlines grounding after door issue in Jan.
BUT – I always travel with a small tote with a change of clothes, and essentials like at least 3 days of meds.
I had travel insurance for every nonrefundable portion of my trip. Luckily I was on my way home when I had issues, but still. Once I knew it was an issue, I made a hotel reservation on my own, Alaska refunded after.
If I had needed another flight earlier, I would have gone online and made other reservations on another airline like Sourhwest that was flying, confident in the fact that Delta would surely either refund or give me credit after or even claim on my travel insurance. Why wait in a 7 hr customer service line- be proactive. Get a hotel room and figure something out – A bus to a nearby town that might have rentals, or even to a nearby airport, that had available flights. Uber to the suburbs, where more or cheaper hotels are, try for a rental car there.
I realize some people don’t have the finances to front some of these costs, but I build these maybe costs into my vacation plann ing. I don’t understand camping out at the airport in these type of situations.
Agree. “I’m sorry that you feel your life is so important that you’re upset with us innocent victims of CloudStrike who are working instead of lazying around an airport terminal” isn’t much of an apology, and $12 with it SkyMiles barely covers the cost of an airport bottle of water.
Blame lies with one person: Ed Bastian.
The Board needs to fire him for
1. Allowing the company’s IT infrastructure to collapse.
2. Taking a PR trip to Paris when thousands were still stranded around the globe but particularly at his home airport, Atlanta.
3. Placing all of the blame on CrowdStrike. Any lawsuit will expose in discovery DAL’s crap IT systems.
4. Using Vitalis in 2024.