Delta Air Lines will abide by its Customer Protection Principles in the Presence of a Faulty Software Update from CrowdStrike

Southwest Airlines had technical issues that resulted in the cancellation of thousands of flights during the winter holiday season in 2022, and left millions of travelers stranded.

In the public letter, Bastian wrote that several Delta applications run on Microsoft Windows, resulting in many tools being impacted in the outage. More specifically, one of the airline’s crew tracking tools was deemed inoperable and “unable to effectively process the unprecedented number of changes triggered by the system shutdown,” Bastian wrote.

The airline gave waivers to customers on flights that had been affected by the outage, allowing them to change itineraries and rebook their flights free of charge.

“We have received reports of continued disruptions and unacceptable customer service conditions at Delta Air Lines, including hundreds of complaints filed with @USDOT. I told Delta that we would hold them to all of the applicable passenger protections.

Under federal regulations, customers are not obligated to accept the travel credit offered to rebook flights, but they are still entitled to a cash refund.

“We have made clear to Delta that they must take care of their passengers and honor their customer service commitments,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement Tuesday.

The DOT said that Southwest paid the largest civil penalty they have ever levied for consumers, of $140 million.

The Department of transportation is investigating Delta for the recent flight disruptions because of high volume of consumer complaints.

“This is not just the right thing to do, it’s the law, and our department will leverage the full extent of our investigative and enforcement power to ensure the rights of Delta’s passengers are upheld,” he added.

“We remain entirely focused on restoring our operation after cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike’s faulty Windows update rendered IT systems across the globe inoperable,” the airline said in its statement, adding that teams are constantly working to get its operations back to normal.

Microsoft users were knocked offline after a flawed software update from CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike said the problem was not a cyberattack but a software glitch. The company withdrew the problematic channel file after identifying the issue.