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Delta faces scrutiny over extensive flight cancellations and customer service failures

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Delta faces scrutiny over extensive flight cancellations and customer service failures
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Gary Leff Chief Financial Officer | View from the Wing

When Southwest Airlines experienced a prolonged disruption over Christmas 2022, it faced significant media criticism. In contrast, Delta Air Lines' recent operational issues have not attracted the same level of negative attention.

Southwest's problems were initially caused by insufficient staffing to handle adverse weather and IT systems that failed to reboot their operations. Delta's current challenges began with an issue involving CrowdStrike, which also affected other airlines and companies like Starbucks. However, while competitors recovered quickly, Delta has struggled to restore normal operations.

On Sunday, American Airlines canceled 2% of its flights despite bad weather in Texas, whereas Delta canceled 36%. Despite this disparity, Delta has maintained a positive narrative rather than taking responsibility for the disruptions. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reportedly contacted Delta CEO Ed Bastian to remind him of the airline’s responsibilities to passengers.

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Frequent flyer Jason Helmes expressed his frustration on social media: "For the last decade I’ve flown first class @Delta for every single flight. Never again. Y’all just lost a customer for life. Horrible customer service. Cancelled flights with no reimbursement. No answers from anyone."

Delta’s latest statement attributes the issues to "an outside vendor technology issue," referencing Friday's CrowdStrike outage that temporarily halted operations for several airlines. However, critics argue that Delta's internal crew scheduling problems and inadequate customer service are the main reasons for ongoing disruptions.

Despite claims of notifying customers about delays via the Fly Delta app, many users reported that the app crashed frequently. Comparisons have been drawn with Southwest Airlines' response during their crisis; Southwest reimbursed travel costs on other airlines to help stranded passengers, costing them up to $400 million.

Brian Brenberg also voiced his dissatisfaction: "Delta vs. United in Minneapolis. And I picked the wrong team, my friends."

Joe Brancatelli commented on Delta’s approach: "[Delta] doesn’t seem to have the corporate humility to admit that it’s fallen and can’t get up."

As of early Monday morning Eastern Time, Delta had canceled 15% of its flights compared to American Airlines’ 1% and United Airlines’ 0%. The situation suggests that travelers may want to reconsider flying with Delta until these issues are fully resolved.

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