Delta, CrowdStrike Spar Over July Meltdown

The exchange follows a Delta report that the incident caused around 7,000 flight cancellations over the course of five days, leading to $500 million in losses.

Caleb Revill

Monday, August 12, 2024 at 12:25 PM ET

Verified

Edited By: tccjeremy

A Delta Boeing 757-200. [AirlineGeeks/William Derrickson]

Key Takeaways:

Delta Air Lines rejected CrowdStrike's attempt to shift blame for the mid-July IT outage, asserting that CrowdStrike's delayed, unhelpful, and faulty solutions hindered recovery efforts and caused further issues.
Delta reported a $500 million financial loss due to the incident, encompassing 7,000 flight cancellations, customer refunds, and operational costs, and is pursuing legal claims against CrowdStrike and Microsoft for these damages.
Both CrowdStrike and Microsoft deny Delta's allegations of negligence and claim Delta refused their offers of assistance during the widespread disruptions.
Delta is facing a class-action lawsuit from passengers alleging a disproportionately high number of flight cancellations compared to other airlines and failures to provide automatic refunds or fair compensation.

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Delta Air Lines responded to CrowdStrike’s letter shifting blame to the airline for allegedly mishandling its response to disruptions caused by a faulty update sent to Microsoft Windows operating systems in mid-July.

In a response letter to CrowdStrike attorney Michael Carlinsky, Delta attorney David Boies states that the software company has no basis to suggest the airline was responsible for the faulty software that crashed systems around the world.