Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian on Friday offered employees two free travel passes to thank staff members who were caught in massive disruptions last month sparked by a botched CrowdStrike software update that stranded thousands of customers and crew. Delta had more trouble than competitors in recovering from the outages that took thousands of Windows machines offline around the world, affecting industries from health care to banking. The carrier canceled more than 5,000 flights between July 19 and July 24, more than it did in all of 2019, according to FlightAware. Bastian said earlier this week that the incident cost the company about $500m, a sum that is equal to about 40% of Delta’s second-quarter profit. A crew-tracking platform was a contributor to the cancellations and disruptions, the airline has said. Delta said Wednesday that the airline had to manually reset 40,000 servers. The disruption “has been a humbling moment for our company,” Bastian said in his note on Friday, which was seen by CNBC. “I know it’s been extremely difficult, and I’m deeply sorry for what you have endured. An operational disruption of this length and magnitude is simply unacceptable — you and our customers deserve better.” Upward of 4,000 Delta flight attendants picked up more than 6,100 trips during the disruptions, receiving extra pay, according to another Delta staff memo on Friday. “Your efforts throughout have been nothing short of heroic,” Bastian told staff. The two “positive space” passes Bastian offered employees are confirmed seats like a customer would have, different from the free standby flying airline employees often do if there are available seats.<br/>
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CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. says the leadership of Delta Air Lines Inc. failed to respond to an offer for assistance in the wake of last month’s catastrophic system outage that led to thousands of canceled flights and a federal investigation of the US carrier. The allegation, in a letter Sunday from attorneys for the technology firm, builds upon CrowdStrike’s claim last week that Delta rejected its repeated attempts to help. CrowdStrike said Sunday that its chief executive officer, George Kurtz, tried to connect with his counterpart at the airline, Delta CEO Ed Bastian. “CrowdStrike’s CEO personally reached out to Delta’s CEO to offer onsite assistance, but received no response,” according to the letter, which was signed by Michael Carlinsky, co-managing partner of law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. In a separate emailed statement, CrowdStrike said that it hopes Delta will “agree to work cooperatively to find a resolution.” Delta hasn’t any response to the letter from CrowdStrike, a spokesperson said, but drew attention to Bastian’s earlier comments to CNBC that referenced legal action to seek financial relief related to lost revenue, compensation to passengers and reputational impact. The Atlanta, Georgia-based carrier was by far the worst hit airline as it struggled to normalize flight operations several days after the outage. Delta said it took a $500m charge after canceling more than 5,500 flights in the several days that followed the initial CrowdStrike outage that impacted computers powered by Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system. In the letter, lawyers for CrowdStrike also pointed out that “any liability by CrowdStrike is contractually capped at an amount in the single-digit millions.”<br/>