Young, old, families, unaccompanied minors, elite status holders, it didn’t seem to matter.
No one got a break when the CrowdStrike software outage upended global air travel in July, triggering flight delays and cancellations on multiple carriers that stranded thousands of travelers around the world for days.
In the weeks after the outage, we asked affected readers to share their experiences during the incident and more than 230 of them responded, almost unanimously telling us that the airlines failed at every point of travel, for every kind of traveler.
Airline apps malfunctioned. Gate agents were simply overwhelmed. Vouchers for hotels or food were mostly unavailable or inadequate. And stuck travelers said that even if they spoke to an agent or got through to customer service, they received incomplete and inconsistent responses. Almost two months later, requested reimbursements for food, accommodation and transportation expenses are still outstanding.
While complaints about all the affected carriers turned up, more than half of the responses stemmed from issues with Delta Air Lines, which struggled more than most other airlines in getting operations back to normal in the days after the outage.
Here’s what our readers told us about how the outage upended their travels — and where the airlines let them down.
Getting help
In the United States, disruptions hit at least six airlines early Friday, July 19. The major carriers Delta, United Airlines and American Airlines, which relied on computer systems that used CrowdStrike software for critical operations such as passenger check-in and crew scheduling, were especially hamstrung. Delta alone said it canceled 7,000 flights over a five-day period, including 40 percent of its scheduled flights for July 21. (In contrast, Delta canceled only nine flights on Aug. 30, the busiest travel day of the Labor Day holiday weekend, according to a flight-tracking company, FlightAware.)
A Delta spokesman said that the airline was taking the customer reports seriously and that the company would “look into what may have occurred.”
“Delta people are given the autonomy in the moment to take good care of our customers regardless of the cause or reason of a delay or cancellation,” he said.
But reaching customer service was the first hurdle. Efforts made in person at the airport, by phone, through an app or by social media failed or resulted in hourslong and in some cases, days-long, waits.
“Four days in the Atlanta airport, waiting in lines,” wrote Trish Snyder flying Delta, while Eileen Hurley, stranded in Amsterdam for four days with no luggage, had little success on the phone: “I tried to call Delta and was told there was a 680-minute wait for an agent! 11 hours!”
American’s website “basically didn’t work at all,” said Bob Norris,who ended up stuck in Fort Myers, Fla. He spent hours waiting in line and on the phone, “having no clue when we would be able to get a flight out.”
Jon Rager tried Delta’s online chat function after his flight from Detroit to Jacksonville, Fla., was canceled. The wait topped 600 minutes. He and his wife and kids never made it to Florida.
When Michael Fulvio and his wife, Amy, landed — late — in Minneapolis a little before midnight, a gate agent there said that their connecting flight to Vancouver had been canceled.
The gate agent couldn’t help with rebooking, either to Vancouver or back home to Philadelphia. The Delta app, too, was equally useless, Mr. Fulvio said: Its text feature was overloaded and the entire app was glitching. A two-hour phone wait for customer service yielded no answer.
“We tried everything, and nothing ever worked,” said Mr. Fulvio, 41, and a customer service director for a retail brand. “No one from Delta ever helped us.”
Airline status didn’t seem to matter, in person or on the phones.
Amy Taylor and her husband, returning home to Salt Lake City from Alaska, were already on the plane in Anchorage when the Delta flight attendant announced that everyone would have to disembark. Ms. Taylor, who said she’s flown nearly a million miles with Delta, then stood in a priority line at the airport for two hours only to be sent back to her gate. When she called Delta’s special phone line for travelers with elite status, a reply call came three hours later. The agent said her flight would be the next to depart. It wasn’t.
Ms. Taylor, 53 and a substitute teacher, described the situation as a “total failure.”
Getting vouchers
Airlines are required to issue passengers prompt refunds or rebooked flights and provide hotel or meal vouchers for flight disruptions within the airlines’ control — as was the case with the CrowdStrike outage.
Spokespeople for American, Delta and United said the carriers supplied vouchers to stuck customers. But passengers said they were informed not only that there were no vouchers for food, hotels or transit, but also, in some cases, told that the outage disruptions weren’t under the airline’s control, despite a clear directive from the Transportation Department.
“I was told that nothing could be done for me,” said John Reilly, recallling what happened after a canceled Delta flight from Boston to Atlanta left him with a two-day wait for a rescheduled flight. He booked himself a hotel room.
No vouchers, no suggestions of any kind, were offered to Julia Simonsen either. The 55-year-old executive chef had expected a seven-hour trip home to Salt Lake City from Halifax, Canada, but instead endured a 26-hour journey that cost her a lost bag and $800 in meals, transit and lodging. The agents for American said they couldn’t print vouchers because the system was down, she said. Her bag is still missing.
Those who did receive vouchers had to proactively ask for them, and these were limited in value — $12 or $15 for food, $150 for hotels.
Linda Vogel, flying United, said she received a $12 voucher at San Francisco International Airport, “which almost paid for my bagel.”
Stuck in Calgary for two days, Peter La Grand and his three children, aged 13 and younger, received vouchers for one hotel room — which had only one bed— and eight meals. But two days later, on what should have been the last flight to their final destination of Michigan, they were bumped. They were told they had to wait two more days for rebooking with WestJet, a Delta partner. Not only did they not receive compensation for being bumped, the father wrote, they were “given no hotel, no food, no assistance.” (The family rented a car to drive the rest of the way.)
Other travelers reported receiving vouchers that expired before they could use them, or that the airline had run out altogether.
“Delta was out of hotel vouchers and simply instructed us to fill out reimbursement forms on their website after the trip,” said Zachary Boyles, stranded in New York City for two days. “There was no guidance on what could be approved or not. We are honestly nervous for the outcome.”
Getting home
Everyone wanted to get home. Or at least get going.
“Thousands of us were camping at the airport, so the bathrooms and trash were out of control,” wrote Emily Keller, who was stuck for three days at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. “There were no hotel rooms, no rental cars in a 100-mile radius, not a lot of food.” Trying to get home to Cleveland, she and her husband managed to get as far as Columbus, Ohio, after what she described as much resistance from Delta.
Others found and booked their own flights, sometimes much pricier than their original ones.
The Taylors, in Anchorage, found a flight on Alaska Airlines on their own, costing more than $1,000 more than their canceled flight for two tickets. (Mrs. Taylor said Delta has reimbursed $578 for their Delta flights, and food and a hotel, but not for the Alaska flights.)
Unaccompanied minors may have been worse off.
“It felt like Delta was holding my children hostage in a state far away from their home,” wrote Julia Greenfield of trying to get her two young sons home to San Diego after visiting family in Wisconsin. Delta was the lone airline that for days temporarily prohibited minors from traveling solo.
“Our flights weren’t just canceled,” she wrote. “My kids were denied boarding repeatedly and not offered a way back home to their parents.”
Getting reimbursed
Airlines don’t publicly disclose how much they will cover for hotels or reimburse in food, transit and other expenses. United, American and Delta say in their customer service plans that they’ll reimburse “reasonable” costs.
Readers shared myriad gripes about the process, across airlines.
For Jennifer Viscosi and her family, it took five days to return home to Orlando from Italy because multiple United flights were delayed and canceled. For forced overnight stays in Rome and in Washington, they spent thousands to cover car services, meals, clothing and hotel rooms. United first only gave her a $300 travel voucher for the inconvenience, but has since agreed to reimburse $1,600 — a fraction, Ms. Viscosi said, of what was spent.
Travelers said they received no or little information on how to file for reimbursement and they were sent emails requesting receipts that had already been provided and announcing denials for costs that should have been covered. Some Delta customers said that calling a customer service number only led to a disconnected line.
“It is a full-time job simply trying to get any attention from the airlines,” wrote Mr. La Grand, who was stuck in Calgary and Minneapolis. “Honestly the whole thing has worn me down and it is hard to summon the will to raise protest. I also really don’t think I will get any remuneration in the end.”
In a securities filing released last month, Delta said it expected to pay about $170 million in refunds, reimbursements and crew-related costs related to the CrowdStrike outage. A Delta spokesman said that the airline has had a “record volume” of customers requesting refunds and reimbursements, and has processed hundreds of thousands of refunds since the outage.
Jill Kiel missed an Alaskan cruise, for which she spent $13,000. Delta has refunded her family’s canceled flights and has committed to reimbursing about $500 for multiple meals. But taking the money means waiving the right to sue Delta.
“Cashing the check relieves Delta of any future claims, so I’m having a hard time deciding if I even want to accept the check,” she said.
Separate from refunds and reimbursements, Delta automatically awarded some passengers 10,000 frequent-flier miles. Some travelers on American reported receiving 7,500 miles. Others got nothing.
Mr. Rager, the traveler trying to get to Florida, said that the miles from Delta were a “nice gesture” that fell short. They had been denied hotel vouchers and then it took them three tries — and more than a dozen hours of waiting — to get meal vouchers. The airline also misplaced their car seat and five pieces of checked luggage.
“My family and I don’t consider this compensation, because we’d be forced to go through Delta to use these miles,” said Mr. Rager, a 42-year-old financial adviser from Denver.
Getting results
In July, the Transportation Department, which said it is investigating Delta’s response to the outages, received more than 8,000 consumer submissions about the airline. This far outpaces past submissions: In 2022, the Transportation Department received a total of 5,600 for Delta.
“An operational disruption of this length and magnitude is unacceptable, and our customers and employees deserve better,” Ed Bastian, Delta’s chief executive, said in the August securities filing. “Since the incident, our people have returned the operation to an industry-leading position that is consistent with the level of performance our customers expect from Delta.”
Some travelers have filed a class-action lawsuit against Delta. Others told us they were re-evaluating their loyalty to the airline.
“They have gone from being an airline I trusted quite solidly, to one I no longer trust at all,” said Michael Shappe, a 55-year-old software engineer who resorted to taking three trains to get from New Jersey to St. Paul, Minn., after the outage.
But a few of our 231 respondents did report positive customer service experiences during the global travel mess.
Kyla Markowitz, 23, was flying back to the United States from visiting her boyfriend in Amsterdam. She voluntarily agreed to be bumped not once, not twice, but three times from overbooked flights on American — and was given vouchers as well as $3,200 in total in compensation.
“I was asking for the money, happy to have an income after months of unsuccessfully applying to jobs,” wrote Ms. Markowitz, who stayed with her boyfriend until she flew out four days later. “I was extremely satisfied.”
The post Stranded in the CrowdStrike Meltdown: ‘No Hotel, No Food, No Assistance’ appeared first on New York Times.
