Delta Air Lines has been in the news this week in the airline industry for a five-day operational meltdown that has caused more than 5,000 flight cancellations and stranded passengers and their checked bags for days.

The meltdown also drew the attention of the US Department of Transportation, which has since launched a formal investigation into Delta’s handling of operational mess.

The airline attributed the slowdown to Friday’s crowdstrike IT outage, and the carrier and senior executives remained largely silent throughout the crisis. Apart from a few written statements, no executives have appeared on TV to apologize to customers.

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Against that backdrop, Delta CEO Ed Bastian appears to be returning to business as usual, after landing in Paris for a long-scheduled trip to the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Bastian flew from Atlanta to Paris on Tuesday and arrived in the city a few hours behind schedule on one of Delta’s regularly scheduled daily flights between the two cities.

Delta is the official airline of Team USA and the inaugural founding partner of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Bastian will meet with key leaders and business partners in Paris, an airline spokesperson confirmed to TPG.

That said, Bastian’s visit to Paris will lead to his first public appearance since the meltdown began. That could open the CEO up to questions about why the carrier and its CEO didn’t respond more vocally to the crisis.

Bastian could also be pressured to stick with a long-planned trip to Paris, opting to stay at Delta’s Atlanta headquarters to help employees navigate what is the airline’s biggest public relations crisis in years.

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In fact, one group is pushing Delta’s flight attendants to unionize Shared on Instagram A meme about Bastian being in Paris on Wednesday.

Instagram

In a statement confirming Bastian’s trip, Delta shared that “Ed is delaying this long-planned business trip until he is confident the airline is firmly on the road to recovery. As of Wednesday morning, Delta’s operations were returning to normal.” Ed keeps the senior operations leaders busy.”

Delta’s troubles first began Friday following a crowdstrike outage that knocked out most of the airline’s IT systems. Chief among them is the crew scheduling software, which was not immediately successfully reactivated, leaving many flight attendants and pilots out of position during the recovery.

That disruption lasted several days until Delta finally began to resume operations Tuesday night.

All told, Delta canceled a total of more than 5,000 flights throughout the meltdown. The airline promises to compensate passengers with Delta SkyMiles and travel vouchers, and to reimburse fliers for some limited out-of-pocket expenses related to the disruption. This includes meals, hotels and ground transportation, but the airline has not shared whether it will pay for expensive last-minute flights on other airlines for affected travelers.

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