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- A Delta pilot is reportedly accusing his employer of stealing his app idea and suing for $1 billion.
- He spent $100,000 on building the app, which he pitched to Delta, Bloomberg reported.
- Delta turned down his idea, but then launched an identical app, he reportedly said in the suit.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
A Delta Air Lines pilot is suing the company for $1 billion after claiming it stole the idea for an app which he had developed and pitched to them, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
Captain Craig Alexander filed a lawsuit against Delta in Georgia state court on Monday claiming he put $100,000 of his own money towards developing a communications app called QrewLive for Delta crew, 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 the pilot's idea and launched another app in 2018 called "Flight Family Communications" (FFC) that was identical to his, Alexander said in the case, cited by 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, per Bloomberg.
The cost of the app technology, "based solely upon operational cost savings to Delta, conservatively exceeds $1 billion," Bloomberg reported Alexander saying.
Keenan Nix, Alexander's lawyer, told Bloomberg on Wednesday that Delta "stole like a thief in the night."
Insider has approached Delta 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, CIO Rahul Samant, and four other company executives are all named in the suit, according to Bloomberg.