Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian is speaking out after thousands of flight cancelations left passengers stranded, delayed, and without luggage.
In a memo early Wednesday morning, Bastian told customers that he was hopeful the worst was over and systems should be up and running after last week’s CrowdStrike outage that affected one of Delta’s key crew tracking-related tools. Bastian also said in the memo that he’s read customers’ frustrated emails and apologized to those impacted.
“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,” Bastian wrote. “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.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, Delta had canceled 41 flights — just 1% of its total flights for the day — and delayed 513. In comparison, on Tuesday, the airline had canceled 511 flights and delayed a whopping 1,685.
On Wednesday, the same day his memo was released, Bastian arrived in Paris ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics, where Delta is the official airline for Team USA.
“Ed delayed this long-planned business trip until he was confident the airline was firmly on the path to recovery,” Delta told CNN in a statement. “As of Wednesday morning, Delta’s operations were returning to normal. Ed remains fully engaged with senior operations leaders.”
Related: CrowdStrike CEO Responds to Its Update Largest IT Outage in History
The airline said it has continued to provide affected customers with meals, accommodations, and ground transport in addition to vouchers, reimbursements, and SkyMiles.
Delta was down over 9% year over year as of Wednesday afternoon.