Delta Airlines has intensified its efforts to seek compensation from CrowdStrike, criticizing the cybersecurity firm’s response to a major technology disruption that Delta claims cost it at least $500 million. Delta’s legal representative, David Boies, strongly rebuked CrowdStrike’s defense, asserting that there is no evidence to suggest Delta was responsible for the faulty software that led to widespread system crashes.
Dispute Over The Outage
The dispute centers around a global IT outage that began on Friday, July 19, which resulted in a cascade of flight cancellations and delays. Delta, CrowdStrike, and Microsoft are entangled in a debate over accountability. Delta reported canceling roughly 7,000 flights during the five days following the outage, far exceeding its competitors and disrupting travel for more than 1.3 million customers.
Delta’s CEO, Ed Bastian said:
“Delta was clearly impacted at a much higher level than any other airline.
“It was the heavy reliance on CrowdStrike and Microsoft integrated into our mission-critical operational stack that triggered all of this.”
Reactions From CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike has pushed back against Delta’s claims, calling them misleading. The cybersecurity firm said it provided substantial support during the outage. CrowdStrike’s CEO, George Kurtz, reportedly contacted Delta board member David DeWalt within hours of the incident, and the company’s chief security officer engaged directly with Delta’s chief information security officer.
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Despite this, the airline reportedly faced delays in receiving support and was initially directed to a public website for manual recovery steps. A subsequent automated solution introduced additional issues. CrowdStrike has denied the existence of a second bug and maintains that it delivered prompt assistance beyond what was publicly available.
Microsoft’s Position
Microsoft has not commented on the ongoing dispute. Both CrowdStrike and Microsoft have suggested that Delta should examine its own operational decisions and technology infrastructure, which may explain why Delta experienced more severe disruptions compared to other airlines, which managed to resume normal operations more swiftly.
