CrowdStrike Disputes Negligence Claims in Letter to Delta Attorney

Software company says it offered free on-site assistance to help the airline fix IT issues during the outage.

Caleb Revill

Tuesday, August 06, 2024 at 10:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

A Delta A220 (Credit: AirlineGeeks/William Derrickson]

Key Takeaways:

CrowdStrike strongly refutes Delta Air Lines' claims of responsibility for the $500 million IT outage, asserting that Delta's own IT decisions and refusal of offered assistance led to its prolonged recovery.
CrowdStrike's attorney stated that the company promptly offered a fix and on-site help to Delta, which was declined, and emphasized that Delta's competitors recovered faster from similar issues.
In response to Delta's public threat of litigation, CrowdStrike has demanded extensive document preservation from Delta and vowed to aggressively defend itself, suggesting Delta will have to explain its actions and recovery speed.

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Temperatures are rising in the blame game between software company CrowdStrike and Delta Air Lines over responsibilities for the massive IT outage that impacted air traffic across the U.S. on July 19.

According to a letter posted on X by aviation reporter David Slotnick on Sunday, CrowdStrike attorney Michael Carlinsky told Delta attorney David Boies that it was misleading to say CrowdStrike was responsible for Delta’s IT decisions in response to the outage. Boies was reportedly retained by Delta to seek damages from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft after airline CEO Ed Bastian said the outages cost the company $500 million.