NPR’s Debbie Elliott speaks with U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about recent flight cancellations due to Crowdstrike’s technical outage.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:
Air traffic is returning to normal in the United States. There were about 100 flight cancellations yesterday, compared with thousands more than a week ago, when the CrowdStrike strike disrupted airline computers. Delta Airlines has been slower to recover than its competitors, and the Department of Transportation has now launched an investigation into the Atlanta-based carrier. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joins us to discuss this. Good morning, Mr. Secretary.
PETE BUTTIGIEG: Hello. Good to be with you.
ELLIOTT: Let’s start with the Delta investigation. What exactly are you looking for in particular?
BUTTIGIEG: There are two areas that we need to focus on. The first is of course the question of how this level of crisis could have happened. The CrowdStrike outage affected systems all over the world. It affected airlines all over the world, but most of them were able to get back up and running within a day or two. Not Delta, no, it took Delta almost a week to get back to normal, and in that time they had about 6,500 flights canceled. So we want to understand what was different about them.
The other thing we’re really focused on here is how they take care of passengers. When there’s a disruption, it’s important that passengers are taken care of. Over the last couple of years, we’ve gotten higher standards, including requiring airlines like Delta to cover meals, hotels, and ground transportation. But we found that countless passengers didn’t have access to those kinds of benefits, couldn’t even get a phone call or talk to an agent.
We are also concerned about whether passengers have been informed of their right to a cash refund. This is a new requirement that we finalized or prepared in April, and it was strengthened by the FAA bill that passed in May. I am also concerned about reports that some passengers may not have been proactively informed that they are entitled to a cash refund. If you want a voucher, miles, something like that, that is fine, but only if you prefer it as a passenger. The default payment is cash.
So these are the kinds of things that we investigate, and we will follow up on every complaint that we receive, which…
ELLIOTT: Is there…
BUTTIGIEG: …So far, there are about 5,000, just for this episode.
ELLIOTT: Is there any preliminary information as to exactly why Delta has taken longer to recover than other carriers?
BUTTIGIEG: Their systems appear to have been more reliant on software that was affected by CrowdStrike, and we’re also hearing that their crew scheduling system for positioning people was overloaded. But these are just preliminary indications, and we want to know more about why it would have been different for Delta.
Our role is not to prescribe the details of what software a given company should use. We set a standard, and the company is responsible for meeting it. Obviously, that was not the case in this case, and we need to understand why.
ELLIOTT: Your department fined Southwest Airlines $140 million for a huge wave of cancellations in December 2022. From what we’ve seen, do you think Delta got the message?
BUTTIGIEG: In fact, it’s a breakdown and a failure. And one of the steps we took a few years ago to significantly increase enforcement is to make it clear to the airlines that they need to invest and make the necessary improvements to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.
Again, it’s too early to know all the similarities and differences between the Delta case and the Southwest case. But what I can say is that the enforcement actions taken by Southwest were a multiple of all previous sanctions in order to set a higher standard. And that higher standard, including that higher bar for enforcement, is going to guide us in this investigation and in all future cases that come forward.
ELLIOTT: You know, you’re used to flying commercially, sometimes sitting in the back of the plane or even in a middle seat. What are the main complaints you hear from other passengers when you’re flying?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, yes, I’m a frequent flyer. You know, I often take several flights a week. And passengers come up to me and tell me about their experiences. Sometimes they pass me notes on a napkin. Once or twice I even wrote a note on one of those vomit bags that they put in the seat in front of you.
And you know, passengers just want to know that someone has their back. And that’s what we’ve sought to do by reorienting the Department of Transportation’s enforcement practices.
There are two things to this. First, we need to put pressure on airlines to perform better so that this doesn’t happen. We were encouraged that last year we had the lowest cancellation rates in a decade, but clearly they still have a long way to go.
And then secondly, you have to make sure that people are taken care of. I think everybody understands that there will never be a day without any delays or cancellations. But the important thing is that when a problem arises, an airline has to support the passengers and make sure that those consumers are taken care of. And that’s…
ELLIOTT: Now we…
BUTTIGIEG: …That’s where our website, flightrights.gov, comes in. It has a lot of useful information and lets us know if an airline is not living up to its responsibilities so we can take action.
ELLIOTT: I can’t let you go. We have less than a minute left, but we have to acknowledge that you’re being floated as a potential running mate for Kamala Harris. Are you interested in that position if she offers it to you? And what do you think she should consider to round out the Democratic ticket?
BUTTIGIEG: So I’m speaking in my official capacity, and the campaign law prohibits me from talking about the campaign and the election. But I can say with certainty that I’m proud to be a part of this administration and to work with an extraordinary leader like Vice President Harris.
ELLIOTT: Mr. Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation, thank you very much for being with us.
BUTTIGIEG: Thank you. I’m delighted to be with you.
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