A Delta Pilot is Reportedly Suing the Airline for $1 Billion, Accusing it of Stealing the Idea for an App He Developed

He said he spent $100,000 to build the app, which he pitched to Delta, Bloomberg reported.

July 15, 2021 2 min read

This story originally appeared on Business Insider

A Delta Air Lines pilot is suing the company for $1 billion, saying it stole the idea for an app he'd developed and pitched to it, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

Craig Alexander filed the lawsuit against Delta in a Georgia court on Monday. He said he put $100,000 of his own money toward developing a communications app called QrewLive for Delta crews, according to Bloomberg.

Alexander pitched the app to Delta in 2015 and got positive feedback in discussions with the airline, he said in the suit, according to Bloomberg.

But Delta rejected his idea and launched another app in 2018 called Flight Family Communications that was identical to his, Alexander said, according to Bloomberg.

"'FFC' is a carbon copy, knock-off of the role-based text messaging component of Craig's proprietary QrewLive communications platform," Alexander said in the suit, Bloomberg reported.

The value of the app technology, "based solely upon operational cost savings to Delta, conservatively exceeds $1 billion," Bloomberg quoted Alexander as saying in the suit.

Keenan Nix, Alexander's lawyer, told Bloomberg on Wednesday that Delta "stole like a thief in the night."

Delta did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

An airline spokesperson told Bloomberg in a statement: "While we take the allegations specified in Mr. Alexander's complaint seriously, they are not an accurate or fair description of Delta's development of its internal crew messaging platform."

Delta CEO Ed Bastian, Chief Information Officer Rahul Samant, and four other company executives are named in the suit, according to Bloomberg.