[crazytony]

One other compounding problem is that Delta's headquarters and main traffic patterns are on the east coast. Crowdstrike affected all the airlines at roughly the same time. This gave them roughly one to two fewer hours to respond before they hit their morning peak flights.

As someone else pointed out, they probably weren't ready by the time they needed their systems for the morning rush so they went to their business continuity strategy (manual). This has a throughput and recovery time penalty and obviously it compounds the longer they are in that mode.

I think what we're finding with the Southwest meltdown and now the Delta meltdown is that the big airlines just don't have the manpower or scheduling slack to accommodate going into business continuity. I do think this should be investigated. Hopefully financial penalties incentivize action but time will tell.

[katbyte]

They prioritized stock buy backs instead of investing in a robust it operation

[shiroiushi]

As well they should!

Which one profits the CEO more? Stock buy-backs or robust IT? Robust IT is only good for the company in the long term; however, with stock buy-backs or other skimping on IT, if disaster like this happens, the CEO just takes his golden parachute and leaves, but if no disaster happens, he gets a huge bonus to buy another private yacht.

[throwaway2037]

    > big airlines just don't have the manpower or scheduling slack to accommodate going into business continuity

Do small airlines have it? And, how much higher are you willing to pay in ticket prices to have this ability?

[WalterBright]

> Hopefully financial penalties incentivize action

Delta already took a huge financial hit for this.