Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian on Friday offered employees two free travel passes to thank staff members who were caught in massive disruptions last month sparked by a botched CrowdStrike software update that stranded thousands of customers and crew. Delta had more trouble than competitors in recovering from the outages that took thousands of Windows machines offline. The carrier canceled more than 5,000 flights from July 19 through July 24, more than it did in all of 2019, according to FlightAware, in an incident that CEO Bastian said earlier this week cost the company about $500 million, a sum that is equal to about 40% of Delta’s second-quarter profit. The disruption “has been a humbling moment for our company,” Bastian said in his note on Friday, which was seen by CNBC. “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…
