By Rajesh Kumar Singh and David Shepardson
CHICAGO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Delta Air Lines said on Thursday it is pursuing legal claims against CrowdStrike and Microsoft after a global outage last month disrupted travel plans of 1.3 million customers and associated costs of at least $500 million.
A software update last month by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered system problems for Microsoft customers, including many airlines. The disruptions persisted at Delta even as they subsided the next day at other major U.S. carriers.
The Atlanta-based carrier canceled about 7,000 flights over five days. It also faces an investigation from the U.S. Transportation Department for the disruptions.
“An operational disruption of this length and magnitude is unacceptable, and our customers and employees deserve better,” Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian said in an SEC filing on Thursday.
Both CrowdStrike and Microsoft have rejected Delta’s claim that they should be blamed for flight disruptions.
On Sunday, CrowdStrike said it was “highly disappointed by Delta’s suggestion that CrowdStrike acted inappropriately and strongly rejects any allegation that it was grossly negligent or committed misconduct.”
But in a letter to CrowdStrike, David Boies, who is representing Delta, said the airline was “surprised and disappointed by CrowdStrike’s decision to try a ‘blame
the victim’ defense.”
“There is no basis — none — to suggest that Delta was in any way responsible for the faulty software that crashed systems around the world, including Delta’s,” Boies wrote.
CrowdStrike did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Delta said direct revenue impact of the incident in the current quarter is estimated to be $380 million, primarily driven by refunding customers for canceled flights and providing customer compensation in cash and frequent flyer miles.
The company also said it has additional expenses of $170 million associated with the technology-driven outage and subsequent operational recovery, primarily due to customer expense reimbursements and crew-related costs, but will have $50 million in lower fuel costs because of the flight cancellations.
Delta told U.S. lawmakers that CrowdStrike’s faulty update “impacted more than half of Delta computers, including many of Delta’s workstations at every airport in the Delta network.”
(Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio and Diane Craft)
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