During July’s peak vacation season, Delta Air Lines was far from enjoying the dog days of summer. The July 19 CrowdStrike power outage—which battered millions of Microsoft operating systems—resulted in the airline canceling 7,000 flights over five days, which Delta CEO Ed Bastian said would cost the company $500 million.
But while competitors like United and American Airlines were able to pick themselves back up only a few days later (United canceled nearly 1,500 flights by comparison), Delta was still scrambling. A Thursday note from Bernstein Research illuminates what went so wrong.
