9 August 2024 (TDI): Delta Airlines claims it suffered a loss of $500 million in outages caused by CrowdStrike.
Following the significant worldwide network outage that occurred last month, Delta Airlines continued to trade barbs with CrowdStrike, and on Thursday, the airline wrote a new letter expressing its anger.
The cybersecurity firm was accused of “negligence” by the US-based carrier, which claimed it had lost at least $500 million (£392 million) and had to cancel thousands of flights due to the outage.
The flight interruptions caused by Delta, which it claimed persisted even after other carriers restored service, were refuted by CrowdStrike.
A class-action lawsuit brought by passengers who were impacted has since been filed against Delta.
CrowdStrike was the source of the global issue on July 19, having distributed a faulty software update to a vast number of its users.
It was estimated by Microsoft that this led to the disablement of 8.5 million Windows devices globally.
Even after other airlines seemed to have recovered, Delta Airlines’ services continued to be affected for days following the outage. The US Department of Transportation is currently looking into Delta’s cancellation of around 7,000 flights over the course of five days, ending on July 24.
As a result, the airline has threatened legal action against Microsoft and CrowdStrike, blaming them for the interruptions.
Microsoft and CrowdStrike have both denied any involvement in the problems at Delta.
What transpired was described as “unacceptable” by Delta CEO Ed Bastian in a filing sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.
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Mr. Bastian stated, “Our customers and employees deserve better. The tech meltdown impacted 1.3 million of Delta’s customers.”
On Sunday, CrowdStrike declared that in the event that Delta filed a lawsuit against it, it would “aggressively” defend itself.
Microsoft also threatened to retaliate, stating that, in contrast to its rivals, Delta was using an antiquated IT infrastructure, according to its preliminary assessment.
Responding to CrowdStrike’s letter on Thursday, David Boies, an attorney for Delta, stated that there is absolutely no evidence to imply that Delta was in any way accountable for the defective software that caused systems all around the world to crash.
Adding that Delta Airlines had spent billions on technology, he claimed the airline’s dependence on Microsoft and CrowdStrike made it difficult to resume operations.
Due to a lawsuit brought by passengers whose flights were cancelled, Delta is now dealing with its own legal issues as a result of the outage.
“No other US airline had cancelled one-tenth as many flights,” according to the lawsuit.
Along with asking passengers to sign disclaimers absolving Delta of any legal claims, it also said that Delta had not adequately compensated its passengers.
Microsoft Office 365 is the scheduling tool of choice for many airlines. These systems had been brought down by the CrowdStrike outage, and manual scheduling was now necessary.
The shareholders of CrowdStrike have recently filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming that it made “false and misleading” claims regarding the software testing it conducted. Denying the accusations is CrowdStrike.
