A pilot is claiming that Delta stole his app, and is suing the airline for more than a billion dollars. To make things just a touch more awkward, the pilot concerned actually flies for Delta …
Bloomberg reports.
Captain Craig Alexander sued Atlanta-based Delta for trade-secrets theft in Georgia state court on Monday. He claims he spent $100,000 of his own money to develop his QrewLive app, which he pitched to the airline as a way to address crew communication snafus after disrupted flights. Delta turned him down but went on to launch its own identical tool, he claims […]
A five-hour power outage that resulted in hundreds of flight cancellations in August 2016 cost Delta more than $150 million. The pilot said in the suit he emailed Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian at the time saying “he had a ‘solution.’” Bastian allegedly responded promptly and referred Alexander to the company’s new chief information officer […]
Alexander claims he had several positive meetings with the airline in 2015 and 2016 in which executives made clear they were interested in acquiring his app. But Delta eventually cut off discussions and then launched its own crew app in April 2018, called Flight Family Communications.
“‘FFC’ is a carbon copy, knock-off of the role-based text messaging component of Craig’s proprietary QrewLive communications platform,” Alexander said in his suit.
Alexander denies that a billion dollars is a ridiculous claim, asserting that the airline has saved more than this by using the app. Delta says the claim about how its app came to be developed is “not accurate or fair.”
Earlier this year, Delta partnered with Apple and AT&T to equip all 19,000 flights attendants with an iPhone 12.
While a variety of smartphones support 5G nowadays, Delta and AT&T also point to the iPhone 12’s AR capabilities as reasons for choosing it over the competition: More accurately assessing in-cabin inventory quickly using AR with the camera on iPhone 12, and immersive training using AR to help flight attendants perform critical tasks – from safety checks to passenger assistance – from nearly anywhere.
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