Delta says CrowdStrike outage wreaked havoc on team USA’s travel

The US Olympic team has won more than 30 medals over the past week. But it took an unusual amount of effort to get them to the games on time.

That’s because Delta Air Lines Inc., the official airline of Team USA, was crippled by the CrowdStrike tech outage just when it was supposed to be transporting 1,800 athletes, coaches, staff and equipment to Paris.

As Delta was forced to cancel thousands of commercial flights in the fallout from the outage, it also had to quickly scramble to fulfill its obligations to Team USA.

Athletes whose flights had been affected had to be moved to other itineraries, including partner airlines and even some competing carriers. Delta also needed to add a last-minute flight from New York to transport athletes, NBC personnel and other customers ahead of pre-games events and the opening ceremony on July 26.

“We had to find ways to get them from wherever they were to Paris for the games despite the outage,” said Tim Mapes, Delta’s chief communications officer, in an interview. “We did everything we needed to.” 

Delta’s team was monitoring every athlete by name, flight and originating airport, Mapes said. He recalls watching tennis star and US flag bearer Coco Gauff clear the list, breathing a sigh of relief when she and her rackets made their flight. 

An errant software update from CrowdStrike caused widespread outages of Microsoft systems, disrupting industries across the globe. Delta was hit harder than other airlines and took much longer to recover.

“We have expressed our regret and apologies to all our customers for this incident and the disruption that resulted,” CrowdStrike spokesperson Jake Schuster said in an emailed statement. “While its major competitors rapidly recovered from the incident, Delta rejected our repeated efforts to assist it in a speedy recovery.”

Schuster didn’t immediately respond to a request for more details on his company’s efforts to help Delta.

Delta said this week that the outage cost it about $500 million. The carrier declined to say how much of that was tied to the Olympics.

“This was done to us. Not done by us,” Mapes said.