Global Outage Puts Airlines (Temporarily?) Out of Business: Letter to Delta CEO

Mr. Ed Bastian Chief Executive Officer Delta Airlines

Dear Mr. Bastian:

No doubt you've already heard from thousands about the poor customer service Delta and other airlines provided this past weekend just about everywhere due to the global outage, and although unprecedented in scale and scope you and your colleagues should have been better prepared for dealing with its fallout. Also, you must be aware that your industry's increasing reliance on technology instead of labor to provide customer service practically guarantees that future abrupt service interruptions will be even more calamitous next time around.

In our case, because of a missed connection our pre-arranged scheduled tour in Peru had to be canceled, and I consider us among the fortunate who did not leave Las Vegas only to be stranded in another airport. We had an hour flight scheduled to leave Las Vegas for Los Angeles at 9am Friday. That flight was delayed continuously almost hourly until it finally departed at 4pm. With that one delay our planned vacation to Peru instantly vanished.

I contend that the mess (a mob of travelers, confusion everywhere, no personnel available for advice) that transpired at Harry Reid Airport in Las Vegas over the weekend could have been avoided if management had realistically assessed the fallout from the outage and advised customers to make other arrangements instead of coming out and being stranded, in many cases for two days. Airlines and airports do that all the time when hurricanes and other storms threaten travel and I believe this man-made mess is at least comparable to a 100 year storm. Headlines warned of the problem late Thursday, so there was no need to have a capacity crowd at 6:30am Friday checking in for flights. By the time we got to our gate there were already hundreds of stranded travelers. The announcement delaying our flight came 15 minutes after we should've started boarding and the excuse was a pilot was needed. Really? It's difficult to believe that important fact wasn't known before we checked our baggage at 7am.

The mistake to allow travelers to come to the airport was compounded by the lack of personnel and their inability to advise travelers wisely. Management should have encouraged staff to level with customers instead of offering bad information and false expectations about when our travel arrangements could be secured. Our baggage had been checked for our flight to Los Angeles and poor advice throughout the day caused us to remain at the airport until 7pm waiting to retrieve our baggage. We finally returned to the airport Sunday to pick up our bags.

This weekend’s mess also points out the reality that technology cannot completely take the place of adequate and competent staff. The moral of the story is clear: When one wakes up the morning of a flight and there's even a hint of system dysfunction or outage involving airlines, one should cut their losses, avoid the airport, and try to make new travel arrangements from home.

I find it somewhat ironic that one of Delta's corporate ancestors, National Airlines, in 1963 ran a TV commercial asking the question shown in the subject bar of this letter and of course the answer back then was a resounding yes!! (As you are aware National Airlines merged with Pan Am which was subsequently acquired by Delta in 1991.) Friday's poor display by Delta as well as other airlines pursuant to the global outage, proved that declining customer service from airlines is a fact of life we all need to accept.

At the very least, Delta and the airline industry at large needs to plan better for such future contingencies.