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After both CrowdStrike and Microsoft suggested that Delta’s problems were Delta’s fault, the airline has vowed to get its pound of flesh – or US$500 million.
The fallout from the July CrowdStrike outage seems to be more or less settling – unless you’re Delta Air Lines.
Despite being told in no uncertain terms by both CrowdStrike, whose faulty update caused the worldwide outage, and Microsoft that maybe the airline’s out-of-date systems were the root cause of Delta’s woes, Delta boss Ed Bastian is having none of it.
In an 8 August Form 8-K filing to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Delta has again laid out the cost it incurred during the incident – the outage caused about 7,000 flight cancellations over a five-day period and is estimated to have cost Delta about US$380 million, US$170 million of which was accounted for by customer and crew-related expenses such as refunds.
Bastian also had his own piece to say in the filing.
“An operational disruption of this length and magnitude is unacceptable, and our customers and employees deserve better. Since the incident, our people have returned the operation to an industry-leading position that is consistent with the level of performance our customers expect from Delta,” Bastian, Delta’s CEO, said.
“We are pursuing legal claims against CrowdStrike and Microsoft to recover damages caused by the outage, which total at least $500 million.”
Delta’s lawyer, David Boies, sent letters to both companies last week decrying their lack of response and the outage as a whole, but both replied with combative letters of their own.
On 6 August, CrowdStrike’s lawyer, Michael B. Carlinsky, co-managing partner of trial lawyers Quinn Emanuel, said that while the cyber security company was “empathetic” to Delta’s situation, it was also ultimately disappointed with its response.
“CrowdStrike is highly disappointed by Delta’s suggestion that CrowdStrike acted inappropriately and strongly rejects any allegation that it was grossly negligent or committed willful misconduct with respect to the Channel File 291 incident,” Carlinsky said.
“Within hours of the incident, CrowdStrike reached out to Delta to offer assistance and ensure Delta was aware of an available remediation. Additionally, CrowdStrike’s CEO personally reached out to Delta’s CEO to offer onsite assistance, but received no response.”
Microsoft’s lawyer, Mark Cheffo of law firm Dechert, asserted that the picture Delta was attempting to paint of the incident was “incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation”.
Cheffo also took the line that that help had been offered to Delta, but ultimately refused.
“Each day that followed from July 19 through July 23, Microsoft employees repeated their offers to help Delta. Each time, Delta turned down Microsoft’s offers to help, even though Microsoft would not have charged Delta for this assistance,” Cheffo said.
Cheffo also laid the severity of the airline’s issues firmly at Delta’s feet.
“Our preliminary review suggests that Delta, unlike its competitors, apparently has not modernised its IT infrastructure, either for the benefit of its customers or for its pilots and flight attendants,” Cheffo said.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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