Delta CEO: Atlanta-based airline facing $500 million in costs from global tech outage

Luggage covers the floor of baggage claim at Atlanta's Hartfield-Jackson Airport as Delta employees try to reunite passengers with their belongings.
Delta employees at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport work to reunite travelers with their luggage on Tuesday, July 23, 2024 as the airline struggled to catch up after a global tech outage. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian says the Atlanta-based airline is facing $500 million in costs related to a global tech outage this month that disrupted emergency services, communications and thousands of businesses.

Speaking on CNBC, Bastian said Wednesday that the monetary amount represents lost revenue as well as “the tens of millions of dollars per day in compensation and hotels” for the five-day period.

A week ago, CrowdStrike blamed a bug in an update that allowed its cybersecurity systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off the global tech outage that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers.