Time for Bastian to exist stage left?
 

This minor windows/crowd strike SNAFu seemed to be mostly resolved by end of busines on Friday, that's from all industries not just Avaition. This service disruption is as bad as Southwest had over X-mas a few years back.

Other Bastain CEO Hall of Fame Acomplishments:
1. Rollout and slight retraction/ moderation of the very popular Sky Miles Plan that alienated the airline's most loyal and long time customers
2. Almost conjoined twin branding with AMEX
3. Today, The delayof the "Something BIG/Summer Vibes" rollout because the airline is currently an operational disaster, again 4 days after an IT issue it's compitetion was able to resolve in a much more compitent and timely manor.

I know he likes staring on all the those "Delta is one big team" Videos at the begining of every flight, but I think it maybe time for him to cash in all his deffered comp sky pesos.

-Paul

He will be fine either way. If he gets dumped he will likely get a multi million dollar exit package for his great contributions:).

Really gross that someone like him is paid so much and will get millions if he leaves. He has been awful for Delta. His son is not polite either when he flies Delta according to FAs I have spoke to at Delta about how they like working there. He has not been good for customer service at all. It is time for Delta to get someone else!

Fair question.

As I get older, I'm more open that failures can make a stronger leader. I've sensed Ed Bastian has tried to do his best at Delta and I give him credit for being part of the success of making Delta the respected airlines it is today. I look at the SkyMiles reversal as Ed listening to their customers. Yes, what is happening at Delta is a huge failure.

If Ed has lost the trust/support of Delta employees/board and/or investor community, then it might be time for a new leader. Before I pass judgment on Ed, I will be watching what he does to ensure this kind of IT meltdown doesn't occur again (and yea I realize this feels a bit like the prior summer meltdown where IT lost track of crews). This whole horrible event may make Ed, IT and Delta a stronger company.

I also realize (I'm no IT guy) that this is not 100% Delta's fault and something very unexpected/unprecedented. I doubt may (if any) IT managers of Fortune 500 companies had plans in place for a CrowdStike update to cause this scenario. In some ways, their investment to ensure their IT systems were not impacted by the bad guys causes their systems to crash with the CrowdStike update. I'd ask the CrowdStike CEO to go before Ed (but this too may make him a stronger CEO).

As an aside, after reading lots of reddit posts, posts here, and other people sharing their experiences, I am very impressed with Delta frontline team doing what I consider their best managing nearly impossible circumstances. I believe most of them really care and know people are distressed and suffering.

Richard

Completely agree. I think those of us who fly often enough to be "recognizable" to frontline teams (whether it's at your home station or wherever) should take it upon ourselves to let them know how much we appreciate what they are doing.

I don’t see how blaming Crowdstrike makes sense when Delta is the one so heavily impacted vs. everyone else. They need to be building with resiliency to vendor failures.

As for Ed, this is what happens when you force yourself in front of every customer without fail - people immediately know the first face that comes up when they think of Delta, and now their thoughts of Delta are negative…

Off topic but in addition to Delta, Crowdstrike's buffoonery took out hospitals and 911 PSAPs. Yes, all of those recovered fairly quickly but the fact that it happened at all is too close for comfort. Imagine if we had 911 centers still in the same state as Delta today...it's a miracle that is not the case and a scenario like that could still happen in the future. The fragility of our critical infrastructure scares me. Agree completely that Delta needs to improve its resiliency in that regard.

Delta was the bastion of reliability. Today they are the Bastion of a joke.

Today they canceled my flight as I was walking into the airport and acted like it was my fault for showing up. Platinum Medallion (even the NEW way) means nothing. Never, even in total weather chaos beyond their control have they not at least tried to help. Today they just handed me a card with the customer service phone number on it and sent me packing.

Customer service phone number? That is a joke anyway as I probably would have been on hold the entire time it took me to drive all day to my destination. I only lasted an hour waiting on hold while I rented a car.

We all looked down at Southwest for this same debacle, and Delta learned nothing from it. Everyone else that was effected is back ish to normal, yet Delta is floundering. When your competition has a problem you don't sit back and laugh, you make damn sure it won't happen to you.

Arguably I've been a Delta fanboy, even with all the Medallion changes I doubled down on their credit card. I clearly have sucker stamped on my forehead.

Come Monday this is no longer a Crowdstrike issue, this is absolutely a leadership failure. He needs to go.

As I said in the other big thread, there should be numerous axings in the IT group up to and including Rahul Samant, the executive VP and Chief Information Officer for technology/applications/data/cyber. And this should be close to immediately after the recovery and they are back to normal operations... however many more days/weeks that will be.

I agree with you completely about getting rid of Bastian and hiring someone else. Before flying most of my flights with Delta, I was flying with Continental, until Jeff Smisek came along. This guy was the worst. Cut this, cut that. I felt as if he didn't appreciate his customers, and I bailed out. I have been flying with Delta ever since. I think that I am just going to fly with whomever has the best price/schedule and worry less about the airline that I am flying with. However, I was pleasantly surprised with a United flight that I had in April, and I have not flown with them since 2001.

Respectfully, completely disagree. The service I encountered today was extremely rude and disrespectful and I didn't even say anything.

I handed him my ID and he just says you know this flight is canceled, looking at me indignantly, like why did I show up I should know better. All I said was yes, you canceled it as I was walking into the airport. He said there is nothing I can do try calling customer service.

At least feign some empathy since you gave me no notice.

And this is the problem with enterprises today. It’s not IT, it’s not tech.
They take little to no responsibility. From Theresa Wise to the current administration, who continues to outsource to India and cut corners (used chat recently?), it is their fault.
They failed in planning.

And Ed supported them.
But he’s fine. They’ll find anither scapegoat, like they did with Avenade and other issues over the years.

I said the same thing until United screwed me royally on a connection and blamed me for their A319 literal blow up. Then lied to the DOT about an MX being a “fuel vendor delay” so they didn’t have to pay out.
It’s all recency and proximity bias.

Was this an outstation? Do you know whether it was a DL employee or a contract worker?

Sorry you had that experience...I certainly won’t make excuses for that behavior. I learned later than I would have liked to in life how to deal with that kind of insufferable personality. Smile and laugh at myself…diffuses the situation, and if they persist they are the ones who look like a fool. You may get nothing but even if so, they can go off and waddle in their own insecurities while you move on with your life.

As I was deplaning from a flight today I smiled to the flight attendant at the door and said “Hang in there.” I could tell from the way she reacted that she was not expecting to hear that, but she needed to.

Cheers!