Delta takes a $500 million hit after IT outage chaos

The global IT outage and its days-long meltdown that followed could end up costing Delta Air Lines half a billion dollars.

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian put the cost at around $500 million.

As well as the missed revenue due to days of cancellations, Bastian said it paid out ‘ tens of millions of dollars per day’ in compensation and hotels.

This lasted for five days as most airlines recovered pretty quickly once the outage was resolved.

The airline said it has processed ‘thousands’ of refund requests.

The airline canceled over 5,000 flights.

The outage was caused by a failed software update by CrowsStrike which took thousands of websites and online services offline which used Microsoft systems.

Once fixed, Delta has further issues for days over its crew scheduling system.

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