Within days of the CrowdStrike outage that crippled Delta Air Lines’ operations in July 2024, then-U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced his department would open an investigation into Delta “to ensure the airline is following the law and taking care of its passengers during continued widespread disruptions.”
The Trump administration in November opted to quietly close that investigation, a Delta spokesperson confirmed this week after Politico first reported on the development.
When CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm and contractor for the Atlanta-based airline, released a defective software update without warning that summer, its customers — including several airlines — saw 8.5 million computers crash.
At airports, what was dubbed the “blue screen of death” left passengers stuck and employees effectively powerless with frozen computers.
Stranded travelers went gate to gate trying to get on flights. Customer service lines stretched down concourses into the night, and some passengers slept on floors overnight.
But while most other airlines had their systems rebooted after a few hours and their operations returned to normal in a few days, an estimated 7,000 Delta flights were canceled in five days, affecting more than 1 million customers. United Airlines, by contrast, canceled about 1,500.
Delta estimates those few days cost it more than $500 million.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
While the question of who was to blame for the incident remains pending in litigation as Delta and CrowdStrike have both sued each other, the federal government has backed off scrutiny of how Delta compensated passengers during the meltdown.
“After review it was determined that Delta’s passengers received prompt refunds, adequate baggage assistance, and appropriate assistance for passengers with disabilities,” a Department of Transportation spokesperson said in a statement.
“Because the President has directed his Administration to ensure enforcement actions serve the public interest, the matter was closed with direction given to Delta to provide adequate customer service assistance including timely notification of the right to seek a refund.”
In 2024, the DOT said it had received a “high volume of consumer complaints” against the airline during the meltdown.
Class action lawsuits against Delta by passengers — and against CrowdStrike by passengers — remain pending as well.
Delta spokesperson Lisa Hanna said the airline is “grateful to the Department of Transportation for recognizing the catastrophic circumstances we faced as an industry during the unprecedented outage and its dismissal of the investigation citing how we cared for customers, which included millions of dollars in refunds, hotels, food and baggage assistance.”
CrowdStrike did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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