Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, says the airline is facing $500m in costs related to a global tech outage that disrupted emergency services, communications and thousands of businesses.
Speaking on CNBC, Bastian said on Wednesday that the monetary amount represents lost revenue as well as “the tens of millions of dollars per day in compensation and hotels” for the five-day period.
A week ago, CrowdStrike blamed a bug in an update that allowed its cybersecurity systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off the global tech outage that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers.
The cybersecurity company also outlined measures it will take to prevent the problem from recurring, including staggering the rollout of updates, giving customers more control over when and where they occur and providing more details about the updates that it plans.
Among airlines, Delta was by far the hardest hit by the outage, having to cancel thousands of flights, because key systems were crippled by the incident.
The US Department of Transportation is investigating why Delta failed to recover as quickly as other airlines. Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary, said last week that the department would also examine Delta’s customer service, including “unacceptable” lines for assistance and reports that unaccompanied minors were stranded at airports.
Bastian said on CNBC that Delta would be seeking damages from the disruptions. CrowdStrike had not made any offers to help Delta financially so far, he added. It has offered free consulting advice.
