Delta Air Lines is losing its serving Chief Operations Officer a little more than a year after he took on the role and just weeks after the Atlanta-based carrier suffered an embarrassing and incredibly expensive operation meltdown brought about by the global CrowdStrike IT outage.
In an internal memo, chief executive Ed Bastian told staffers that Mike Spanos would be leaving the airline on August 31, although the airline insisted that Spanos’ departure was unrelated to the CrowdStrike debacle.
Despite only being in the role since June 12, 2023, Spanos apparently told Bastian earlier this summer that he was looking for new opportunities and intended to leave Delta in the not too distant future.
Spanos spent more than 25 years in various leadership roles at PepsiCo and more recently, was the President and CEO of Six Flags Entertainment where Delta had credited him with leading a digital transformation at the iconic amusement park chain.
Despite having no experience in the aviation or airline industries, Spanos was brought in to integrate various departments, including what has turned into Delta’s highly scrutinized technology division.
In an SEC filing earlier this month, Delta said the CrowdStrike outage and resulting operational meltdown will cost the airline around $500 million.
Around $380 million of that bill will be made up of customer refunds and compensation in the form of cash and SkyMiles payments, while the airline is taking a further $170 million hit in non-fuel expenses like reimbursing passengers and crew members for hotel stays and other expenses.
The losses would have been worse had it not been for the fact that the airline saved around $50 million in fuel expenses for a nearly week-long period in which it grounded thousands of flights because it had lost track of where its pilots and flight attendants were.
Delta has laid the blame for its operational woes firmly at the door of CrowdStrike and Microsoft whose operating systems were affected by the bug but both companies have hit back and accused Delta of failing to keep its technology up to date.
In fact, the actual system that caused most of the problems at Delta – it’s crew scheduling and tracking program – doesn’t actually use a Microsoft operating system and is believed to be an aging IBM legacy system.
Spanos’ role won’t be directly replaced and instead, Chief Customer Experience Officer Allison Ausband and E.V.P. and Chief of Operations John Laughter, will now directly report to Bastian.
