Delta Air Lines rewards employees for response to global IT outage: reports

Delta Air Lines is rewarding employees who had to deal with the travel disruptions caused by the global IT outage last month, according to reports.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian granted employees with two free travel passes as a thank you for their efforts in dealing with the global IT outage, CNBC reported.

"I know it's been extremely difficult, and I'm deeply sorry for what you have endured. An operational disruption of this length and magnitude is simply unacceptable — you and our customers deserve better," Bastian said in the memo quoted by CNBC.

Employees are also set to receive extra pay, according to the report, which cited another Delta memo from the past week.

Global IT outage impacts Delta

The rewards come after the massive IT outage claimed by US cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike hit approximately 8.5 million Windows devices across the world on July 10.

The outage impacted various industries and businesses, including Delta, which had to cancel more than 5,000 flights between July 19 and 24.

The airline told CNBC that it had to manually reset 40,000 servers during the outage, which cost them about $500 million, or about 40% of its profit in the second quarter.

Bastian previously extended his apologies to customers for the disruptions and expressed appreciation to employees who have been dealing with the fallout of the outage.

"I also want to extend my thanks and gratitude to Delta's amazing team of 100,000 aviation professionals, who have been working tirelessly to take care of our customers and ensure their safety in a challenging operating environment," he said in a statement.