- Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said the massive IT outage earlier this month that stranded thousands of customers will cost it $500 million.
- The airline canceled more than 4,000 flights in the wake of the outage, which was caused by a botched CrowdStrike software update and took thousands of Microsoft systems around the world offline.
- Bastian, speaking from Paris, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday that the carrier would seek damages from the disruptions, adding, “We have no choice.”
There is an argument to be made that they IT team and infrastructure isn’t supposed to be an ongoing expense or revenue generation. It’s insurance against catastrophe. And if you wanna pivot to something profit generating then you can reassign them to improve UX or other client impacting things that can result in revenue gain. For example notification systems for flight delays are absolute garbage IMO. I land, I check in my flights app and it doesn’t show any changes to when my flight is departing, I load google and those changes are right there. Or they could add maps for every airport they operate a flight from to their apps. They could streamline the process for booking a replacement flight when your incoming flight is delayed or you missed a connecting flight (i had to walk up to a desk, wait in a queue with dozens of other people for half an hour just to be stampped with a new boarding pass and moved along). They could add an actual notification system for when boarding starts (my turkish air flight at one airport didnt have an intercom so i didnt know it was boarding and missed the fligbt). All of these are just examples but my point is theres an inherent shortsightedness in assuming an investment in IT, especially for a company that deals primairly with interconnectivity, is wasted. This is the reason everything is so sh*tty for users. Companies prefer minimising costs to maximising value to the user even if the latter can generate long term revenue and increase user retention.
