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 rejects Delta Air Lines' allegations of gross negligence or willful misconduct regarding the July 19 IT outage, calling Delta's claims misleading and asserting their initial post-incident review contradicts them.
CrowdStrike states it promptly offered a fix and on-site assistance to Delta, but the airline reportedly declined the help, suggesting Delta's own IT decisions and slow recovery are responsible for its $500 million loss.
CrowdStrike is preparing for potential aggressive litigation, demanding Delta preserve extensive records related to its IT infrastructure, outage response, and recovery plans, and highlights that its contractual liability is capped in the single-digit millions.

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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.