Investigation launched into airline's response to last week's outage
While many airlines were stifled by last week's cyberattack and resulting outage, none had as much difficulty as Delta.
The US Department of Transportation has launched an investigation into Delta Air Lines' treatment of passengers following last week's CrowdStrike outage. The outage caused widespread disruptions to 8.5 million Microsoft Windows-based systems and led to the airline canceling over 7,000 flights since Friday. Here's the post and announcement USDOT posted on X:
U.S. Department of Transportation on X: "We opened an investigation into Delta Air Lines to ensure they comply with our passenger protection laws during recent widespread disruptions. All airline passengers have a right to be treated fairly, and the Biden-Harris Administration is taking action to uphold that. https://t.co/ulfD4aG1VP" / X
"While the outage affected booking, check-in, and boarding pass processes across many airlines, most carriers have largely resumed normal operations. Delta, which uses Microsoft for more than half of its IT infrastructure, cited issues with its crew-tracking tool’s ability to process the high number of changes as the primary cause for its ongoing delays," according to 1440.
Delta's muted response mentioned that the company has offered travel waivers, meal vouchers, and compensation to affected travelers.
“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,” Bastian said in a statement on Wednesday morning. “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.”
While airlines can determine their own compensation policies for flight delays, federal law mandates refunds for significant delays or flight cancellations. Southwest Airlines was fined a record $140M for a similar operational meltdown during the 2022 holiday season.
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