Delta pilot sues airline for allegedly stealing app he designed

A Delta pilot sued the airline for $ 1 billion, accusing it of stealing trade secrets from a communications app he developed a few years ago. According to Bloomberg, Captain Craig Alexander introduced the QrewLive app, which he allegedly developed with $ 100,000 of his own money, to the company as a way for the crew to communicate easily in the event of disrupted flights. However, Delta turned it down and then released what it says is an identical tool a few years later.

Alexander apparently contacted Delta CEO Ed Bastian in 2016 after a computer system failure put all flights on hold and cost the company more than $ 150 million. He told the CEO that he had a solution to such problems, which resulted in several meetings with executives who verbally assured him that they would acquire his app.

According to Alexander’s complaint, Delta ended up telling him that its technology wasn’t meeting his needs and finally launched its own Flight Family Communications app in 2018. He called Delta’s official app a “carbon copy, forgery. role-based application. text messaging component of [his] QrewLive proprietary communication platform. As to how he decided to claim $ 1 billion in damages, he said it was “based purely on cost savings [which] cautiously exceeds $ 1 billion. “

The applicant has worked for the airline for 11 years and still works with the company. Delta spokesperson Morgan Durrant said Bloomberg in a statement: “While we take seriously the allegations specified in Mr. Alexander’s complaint, they do not constitute an accurate or fair description of Delta’s development of its internal crew messaging platform.”