DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:
Airline travel is returning to normal in the U.S. There were just about 100 flight cancellations yesterday compared to thousands more than a week ago when the CrowdStrike date disrupted airline computers. Delta Airlines was slower to recover than its competition, and the Department of Transportation has now launched an investigation into the Atlanta-based carrier. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joins us now to talk about this. Good morning, Mr. Secretary.
PETE BUTTIGIEG: Good morning. Good to be with you.
ELLIOTT: Let's start with that investigation into Delta. What exactly are you looking at in particular?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, there's really two areas of focus. One, of course, is how could this level of meltdown happen? That CrowdStrike outage affected systems around the world. It affected airlines around the world, but most of them were back on their feet within a day or two. Not Delta - no, it took Delta almost a week to get back to normal, and in that period, about 6,500 flights were canceled. So we want to understand what was different in their case.
The other thing we're really focused on here is how they take care of passengers. When disruptions do happen, it's important that passengers are taken care of. Just in the last couple of years, we have secured a higher standard, including requirements for airlines like Delta to take care of meals and hotels and ground transportation. But what we saw was countless passengers who were unable to access those kinds of benefits, couldn't even get somebody on the phone or speak to an agent.
We're also concerned about whether passengers were notified of their right to a cash refund. This is a new requirement we finalized or prepared a rule on this in April, which was fortified by the FAA bill that passed in May. And I'm concerned about reports that some passengers may not have been proactively told about the fact that they are entitled to a cash refund. If you want a voucher, miles, something like that, that's fine but only if you as a passenger prefer that. The default is cash.
So these are the kinds of things that we're investigating, and we will follow up on every complaint that we've received, which...
ELLIOTT: Is there any...
BUTTIGIEG: ...As of now is about 5,000 just from this episode.
ELLIOTT: Is there any early information that explains just exactly why it took Delta longer to recover than the other carriers?
BUTTIGIEG: Their systems seem to have been more dependent on pieces of software that were affected by CrowdStrike, and we're told also that their crew scheduling system for positioning people basically got overloaded. But those are preliminary indications, and we want to know more about why that would have been any different for Delta.
Our posture is not to prescribe the details of what software a given company should use. What we do is we set a standard, and they're responsible for meeting that standard. Obviously, that did not happen in this case, and we need to understand why.
ELLIOTT: Now, your department fined Southwest Airlines $140 million for a huge wave of cancellations back in December of 2022. Based on what we saw, do you think Delta got the message?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, really, they had a breakdown and a failure. And part of what we sought to do with a dramatically tougher round of enforcement that started a couple of years ago is to make clear that airlines need to make the investments and improvements to prevent this sort of thing from happening.
Again, too soon to know all the similarities and differences between the Delta case and the Southwest case - but what I will say is, you know, that Southwest enforcement action was a multiple of any previous penalty in order to establish a higher standard. And that higher standard, including that tougher bar for enforcement, is going to guide us in this investigation and any subsequent cases that come up.
ELLIOTT: You know, you've been known to fly commercial quite a bit, sometimes even back in the back of the plane or even in a middle seat. What are the top complaints that you hear from fellow passengers when you're in the air?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, yeah, I'm definitely a frequent flyer. You know, I take, often, several flights a week. And passengers will come up to me. They'll tell me about their experiences. Sometimes, they'll pass me notes on a napkin. Once or twice, I've even got a note written on one of those sick bags they tuck into the seat in front of you.
And, you know, passengers just want to know that somebody has their back. And that's what we've sought to do as we've reoriented the enforcement practices of the Department of Transportation.
This is about two things. Again, first, pressing airlines to perform better so this doesn't happen in the first place. We were encouraged that last year, we saw the lowest cancellation rates in about a decade, but clearly, they've got a long way to go.
And then the second is making sure that people are taken care of. Look, I think everybody gets that there's never going to be a day with zero delays and zero cancellations. But the important thing is when something does come up, an airline's got to support passengers and make sure that those consumers are taken care of. And that's...
ELLIOTT: Now, we...
BUTTIGIEG: ...Where flightrights.gov, our website, comes in. A lot of good information there - and a means of letting us know if an airline does not meet its responsibilities so that we can follow up.
ELLIOTT: Now, I can't let you go. We've got less than a minute to go, but we have to acknowledge your name is being floated as a potential running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris. Are you interested in the job if she offers it to you? And what do you think she should be looking at to round out the Democratic ticket?
BUTTIGIEG: So because I'm speaking in an official capacity, campaign law prevents me from speaking about the campaign and election side of things. But what I definitely can say is how proud I am to be part of this administration and to work with an extraordinary leader like Vice President Harris.
ELLIOTT: U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, thank you so much for being with us.
BUTTIGIEG: Thank you. Good to be with you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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