Delta Air Lines is finally coming out from under one of the worst airline meltdowns that we’ve seen. Over five days they cancelled more flights than in all of 2018 and 2019 combined. Planes have been out of position. They lost track of crew. Customers couldn’t reach the airline. Hundreds of thousands of people had their plans ruined.
Where was Ed?
The most dangerous place in Atlanta is usually between Delta CEO Ed Bastian and any tv camera. But he wasn’t giving interviews. He wasn’t out talking to employees or customers. He wasn’t even taking responsibility for the mess – days after all the other airlines recovered from the CrowdStrike outage, he was blaming CrowdStrike and not his own carrier’s IT mess that followed, that their own staff couldn’t recover from.
Instead he left the country while passengers were still stranded and employees struggled to get things moving again. This was first reported by ATX Jetsetter. According to airline sources, he and his girlfriend took flight 84 from Atlanta to Paris on Tuesday night. The airline confirms his trip, telling me:
Ed delayed this long-planned business trip until he was confident the airline was firmly on the path to recovery. As of Wednesday morning, Delta’s operations were returning to normal. Ed remains fully engaged with senior operations leaders.
A spokesperson contends that as a Team USA sponsor, it was important for Delta’s CEO to meet with leaders and business partners in Paris. He couldn’t have sent someone else? It was more important than to be with his team on the ground helping each other and customers?
It wouldn’t be the first time that Bastian prioritized his travels over company priorities.
Estimates are the last five days cost Delta $500 million. That’s less profit-sharing for employees. Bastian needs to be out boosting employee morale, to protect the airline culture and also to fend off flight attendant unionization efforts. Sara Nelson’s AFA smells blood and sees the airline’s failures this week, which have been tough on cabin crew, as a window to crawl through. Letting AFA-CWA look like they care while top management is in Paris for the Olympics seems dangerous for the future of the company.
Chuck Schumer was on your mind, but he’s busy elsewhere.
What makes people so certain he went to Paris with his girlfriend and not a relative such as one of his daughter?
Given Delta said travel demand to Paris was off and costing it about $100 million because of the Olympics, maybe he’s just trying to give a boost to travel demand to Paris by putting the Olympics and Delta and “l’amour” even more in the spotlight.
That was sarcasm.
The dude should be grounded in the US and working on the Delta mess until unaccompanied minors can be flown back by Delta from summer camp without problems.
Scum of the earth.
What tone deaf leadership – where is the Delta board in holding leadership to accountability. He has unmoored what Richard Anderson built with a vapor ware hype machine.
Wow. A totally AWOL CEO in the middle of the biggest crisis Delta has faced in modern history, and Ed thinks it’s more important to travel to Paris. Billions up in smoke. Now we know the reason behind his the radio silence and repeating the false narrative.
@GUWonder “What makes people so certain he went to Paris with his girlfriend and not a relative such as one of his daughter?” because he’s not Montel Williams? Actually, because Delta employees had a look at the names of who was traveling.
@GUWonder “Chuck Schumer was on your mind, but he’s busy elsewhere.”
Yes, you got the reference.
This reminds me of when Ted Cruz fled to Cancun in the midst of a power failure.
Gary can’t let go because the truth doesn’t generate page clicks.
By the time Ed’s flight left for Paris AA was canceling and delaying more flights than Delta
Kirby left before the end of the first day of UA’s meltdown
AA has more cancellations and delays than Delta today. But because AA hasn’t led the industry in operations for a long time that isn’t news even though Delta operates a larger mainline system
And the next issue that Gary should be focusing on is fears that the DOJ will block the AS/HA merger. HA stock has cratered in the last day
And DL will spend less to pay for this meltdown than AA and UA will spend to settle w their flight attendants
By the end of the year Delta will still be at the top of a very messy 2024 for US airlines
Will the Delta employees misusing system access to try to keep tabs on their boss, colleagues, and/or passengers be terminated for engaging in unauthorized system use? Surely the leakers can’t say that his travel companion was waitlisted for an upgrade along with him and all passengers at the gates could see it on the GDS as well as them.
He wouldn’t want to miss the parties in Paris. That seems right, doesn’t it?
Señor Leff, I implore you to please leave Montel out of this. Instead let’s honor Jerry Springer who is more befitting here, even as he was a Democrat.
“Next time on The Jerry Springer Show: Hooters in the Air or not”. Then maybe it will be an accompanied by a photo of Sara Nelson in a bikini or short shorts to run up the audience numbers and engagement from angry flight attendants and some others?
Inquiring minds want to know if the DL Amex card loving CEO is entitled to access to the Chase Sapphire Reserve Olympics pop-up lounge at the Seine or not.
Don’t worry employees, your profit sharing checks will be just fine, Ed will just raise prices again
Taking a page out of Ted Cruz’s book. Surprised this right wing travel blog isn’t supporting this behavior.
Girlfriend?
Anyone know his history?
Wife or ex-wife, Delta FA Ann’s?
Girlfriend Debra Strand?
Is she 20 or not so young?
Wikipedia says he has 4 kids but no mention of his wives.
As an AA employee who reads Gary’s daily bashing of AA, you DL employees need thicker skin.
by Tuesday night, it was clearly much better than before. and we see today is basically normal operation. At this point, for Ed to fly to Paris, I don’t see a big problem. After all, Delta is the official airline for Team USA, and Ed probably scheduled to go last weekend. To all the talks this is “Ed scaping to Paris”, it is just click bait and all bullshit.
Yes, DL didn’t recover as well as AA and UA. we don’t know how the IT system is configured, each might be affected to a different degree. I’m sure DL will learn accordingly and soon to have its No. 1 status back in CF and on-time performance in August, you want to bet? This is no WN fiasco, WN cancelled 15,000 flights, DL cancelled 5000 flights, not even the same magnitude. This comparison is disingenuous.
IIRC, Bastian’s wife was named Anna or something like that. Think they split some years ago, but I don’t know.
You’re right Tim Dunn. We do hold Delta to a higher standard. Because you tell us everyday it’s better. You comparing Delta to American is very telling.
Whelp, All fixed! Too bad Dotty and Dennis from Detroit spent their anniversary at the airport , but hey , there is always next year! Meanwhile enjoy that free baggage! Optics are everything occasionally.
@Tim
His flight left on Tuesday night, the same day DL cancelled 14% of flights compared to 4% from AA. So it sounds like you’re confused. Even more funny, DL84 was delayed by over 2 hours on Tuesday… So DL was so on track at the time he left that they couldn’t even get him there in time hahaha
Oh Tim, please check your facts…
Also you have harped on multiple times about Delta operating a larger mainline, At June 30 their report says they had 969 aircraft, UAL says they had 958 (which btw are bigger on average than Delta’s because Delta has a bunch of A220-100s and 717s and fewer widebodies). At the End of March 30 AAL had 967 aircraft in their mainline, and I presume when they report overnight tonight they will have had more than net 2 aircraft deliveries in the last 3 months, which would then mean you’re wrong on here and on every other post when you say Delta has the biggest mainline.
You also seem to think that it was only Delta’s mainline being destroyed, Endeavor (Delta’s largest regional which t wholly owns) had a 15% cancellation rate on Monday compared to 5% for PSA (an AAL wholly owned sub). So I don’t really know what your point is here? It kind of seems incoherent and just factually incorrect…
Don’t worry, Delta will try to minimize losses by refusing to pay expenses incurred by customers to get home. They have already refused my claim!
So Ed is telling everybody it will probably be the end of the week before people stop sleeping on an airport floor while also heading to the airport. What the hell, at least I got my money back for the cancelled flights. That’s about all you can hope for with US airlines.
Glad people are holding Delta accountable, hope Ed is having fun in Paris, while Delta is still recovering! Terrible Look.
Is Ed best friends with Ted “Cancun” Cruz??? Or he was just trying to emulate a public figure he admires…. :):)
I slowly start to wonder if Tim Dunn is a normal investor into Delta or invested all his savings into Delta? This kind of defending a carrier that was clearly the slowest recovering here ain’t normal. Southwest and AA recovered fastest, United second and Delta was last this time. If Delta had done a better PR damage control it wouldn’t have been half as bad. But Delta kept blaming others and tried the usual arrogant ‘we are better’ / ‘but we are Delta’ strategy. The problem with ‘keep on climbing’ is, that one day you run out of juice and you have to go down again…or you get too close to the sun like Icarus.
Let’s go on with business. Delta will most likely keep playing it’s tricks to keep the statistics look better. And AA, UA will have more cancelations and delays when there is bad weather in Texas. Delta will have more delays and cancelations when a thunderstorm takes Atlanta out for a couple of hours. Business as usual.
Ed and Ted. Ted and Ed. The Shit Show.
@Tim Dunn
Hey, Timmy boy you got your head handed to you yesterday, now I see you’re back for more!
SUCKER!
Bill
Less than 1% of my portfolio is in all airline but thanks for your concern
Andy
Delta’s system average seats per departure including regionals is higher than American and United.
Should the Delta CEO be asked to step down? His bonus needs to be redirected to the IT department to make sure that backup systems are actually working. The real world isn’t a time for a system redundancy test.
Oh Timmy Timmy Timmy
Your explanation was absolute ******** and you darn know it.
It’s fine if Delta, which you own stock in, does it.
But it’s not okay if someone else does…
Is this Ed’s Scott Kirby moment of taking a private jet moment or Ed’s Ted Cruz fly to Cancun moment?
It’s alright. Let the boss enjoy and build the business relationships.
Señor Ed, has +100k strong employees that run the show. The 60% of them, unionized w/good buck, are behind the curtain, while the front line soldiers are taking daily customers hits below the belt.
enjoy the summer.
@ Tim Dunn
That’s great man, pity I was talking about mainline like you were when you said “though Delta operates a larger mainline system”. You use those words because you want Delta to be the biggest, though its not, AAL is once you include regionals. But as I said, once you exclude regionals, Delta is smaller by total seat count, because they have a ton of old 717s.
Once AAL announces overnight tonight that they gained more than 2 mainline aircraft in the last 3 months, you’ll be wrong on both counts. Btw there is a small chance that you end up being right and AAL’s fleet treads water (or gains one aircraft), for a quarter after they cut their delivery forecast, but given they still expected 22 aircraft this year, I’d bet that you will find out you’re incorrect. They don’t really have a retirement program underway either so that does make it tough for your statement to be correct, but we shall see.
@Andy His flight was delayed so they could accommodate him doing a meeting. They delayed it for him…
He also had tickets on AF from Paris to Toulouse just in case he would have to request sanctuary from his savior and god Guillaume Faury.
Well, you can’t say that Bastian doesn’t show that he’s an odious swine for all the world to see. He just needs to resign.
Tim Dunn should be in running to be a Delta Air Lines forum moderator on Flyertalk.com. That site has had its forums increasingly taken over by company and industry apologists — and government apologists — who green light support for the airline/travel service provider while trying to discredit or disappear hard-hitting criticism and subsequent support for the criticism of the companies which they sort of protect while acting as if they are supposedly just enforcing the site’s rules as posted on the site.
Tim are your arms tired from carrying Ed’s bags through the airport?
So on brand.
@JRSAlpha
That might even be worse than if the flight was delayed because of the meltdown… Hahaha
Yikes this happens all the time, not sure what goes on in these peoples’ heads. Either they are unaware of the optics which is bad or they know the optics and just don’t care, which is worse. Leadership has lost its meaning
@ L — They just don’t care…There is no correlation between their compensation and any ethical behavior or customer service.
Whose plane is this?:
It’s a jet, baby.
Whose jet is this?
It’s Ed’s.
Who’s Ed?
Ed fled, baby. Ed fled.
As a former Delta Airlines investor, what a lousy look for Ed B. When you make +$30M a year, you should be with the company as it struggles to recover. A humble and public CEO is needed when Delta is under stress right now.
I doubt any employee groups are going to go after his behavior since he was excessively generous with the pilot contract and gave all employees a 5% raise this year.
I like Delta, it is one of the few airlines you can still ride a 757 or 767. If you get one of their other planes you can see the seating the was common ten years ago.
Hopefully he flew on Lufthansa and got a taste of how a once=premium airline can go bad in a very short period of time. Our flights on Lufthansa last month were an utter sh*t show – broken toilet leaking sewage into the main cabin, last minute notification of flight cancellation & not being able to reach a live Lufthansa agent for 8 hours, being bumped down from business class to economy even though we paid for business class, three-plus hour delays at two separate European airports and a arrogant condescending flight crew!
Did every connecting passenger on Ed’s flight miss their connection flight in CDG?