Delta Air Lines Reduces Revenue Forecast in Wake of CrowdStrike Meltdown

Image: Delta Air Lines plane (Photo Credit: Eric Bowman)

by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 6:00 PM ET, Thu September 12, 2024

The ramifications of the global CrowdStrike outage continue to be felt by Delta Air Lines.

The company released its financial outlook for the third quarter yesterday, indicating that it expects per-share earnings to take a 45-cent hit, according to a September 12 securities filing.

The decline follows the computer meltdown triggered by a CrowdStrike update, which impacted airlines and businesses worldwide.

Delta also said it expects revenue to either be flat or increase no more than one percent for the quarter ahead, instead of the initially projected two percent to four percent uptick.

Adjusted to exclude fuel-refinery sales, Delta is forecasting revenue of between $14.6 and $14.7 billion. In addition, the carrier says capacity will be lower than expected and cost per seat will be higher than expected.

The CrowdStrike incident began on July 19 and was caused by a faulty update to the Falcon antivirus software. As a result, millions of computers around the world crashed.

Amid the disruption, airlines were forced to ground planes and reimburse travelers.  While many airlines recovered fairly quickly from the incident, Delta struggled for five days and ultimately canceled 7,000 flights.

Delta CEO, Ed Bastian, has accused the cybersecurity firm of being responsible for a service disruption that allegedly cost Delta $500 million. Bastian has claimed that CrowdStrike failed to offer any support during the crisis.

CrowdStrike’s legal counsel however, has rejected Bastian’s accusations and instead has highlighted Delta’s own deficiencies leading up to the incident.