Delta CEO Ed Bastian leaves Atlanta for Paris Olympics as meltdown abates

Delta Air Lines has been in the spotlight of the airline industry this week following a five-day-long operational meltdown that led to more than 5,000 flight cancellations and stranded passengers and their checked bags for days.

The meltdown also drew the attention of the U.S. Department of Transportation, which has since launched a formal investigation into Delta's handling of its operational mess.

The airline attributes the meltdown to Friday's CrowdStrike IT outage, and the carrier and senior executives have remained mostly quiet throughout the crisis. Aside from a few written statements, no executives have appeared on TV to apologize to customers.

Against that backdrop, Delta CEO Ed Bastian appears to be returning to business as normal, having just landed in Paris for a long-scheduled trip for the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Bastian flew from Atlanta to Paris on Tuesday and arrived in the city a few hours behind schedule on one of Delta's regularly scheduled daily flights between the two cities.

Delta is the official airline of Team USA and an inaugural founding partner of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Bastian will meet with key leaders and business partners in Paris, an airline spokesperson confirmed to TPG.

That said, Bastian's visit to Paris will likely lead to his first public appearance since the meltdown began. That could open the CEO to questions about why the carrier and its CEO haven't responded more vocally to the crisis.

Bastian also could be pressed about sticking with the long-planned Paris trip instead of choosing to remain at Delta's Atlanta headquarters to help employees navigate what's been the airline's biggest public relations crisis in years.

In fact, a group pushing to unionize Delta's flight attendants shared on Instagram on Wednesday a meme about Bastian being in Paris.

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In a statement confirming Bastian's trip, Delta shared that "Ed delayed this long-planned business trip until he was confident the airline was firmly on the path to recovery. As of Wednesday morning, Delta's operations were returning to normal. Ed remains fully engaged with senior operations leaders."

Delta's woes first began on Friday following the CrowdStrike outage that knocked out most of the airline's IT systems. Chief among them is the crew scheduling software, which wasn't immediately reactivated successfully, leading to many flight attendants and pilots being out of position during the recovery.

That disruption cascaded across several days until Delta finally started getting its operation back in order Tuesday night.

All told, Delta has canceled more than 5,000 flights in total throughout the meltdown. The airline promises to compensate passengers with Delta SkyMiles and travel vouchers and to reimburse flyers for some limited out-of-pocket expenses related to the disruption. This includes meals, hotels and ground transportation, but the airline hasn't shared whether it would pay for pricey last-minute flights on other airlines for affected travelers.

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