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A collective of flight attendants at Delta Air Lines is incensed that their company’s CEO is flying to Paris for the Olympics while many of them continue to deal with the fallout from the CrowdStrike cybersecurity outage. The group, made up of people at the carrier who are seeking union representation by the Association of Flight Attendants, criticized Ed Bastian for not hunkering down at Delta headquarters.
“Delta Flight Attendants have suffered five days of system-wide chaos, leaving us stranded and often without places to stay,” the workers wrote on their website. “And while operations are looking better today, many of us are still far from home. That’s right – while management gave us baggies of laundry detergent in crew lounges, Ed and several board members traveled to Paris instead of being on the front lines leading us through this turmoil.”
Though many airlines had their operations disrupted by the CrowdStrike outage, Delta’s recovery has been especially slow. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said earlier this week that his agency is investigating the carrier’s response to the issue. In an update Wednesday, however, the company said that “the worst impacts of the CrowdStrike-caused outage are clearly behind us,” with a full recovery expected by Thursday.
In a statement provided to Quartz, Delta said that “Ed delayed this long-planned business trip until he was confident the airline was firmly on the path to recovery.”