CrowdStrike Denies Responsibility for Delta's July Flight Disruptions

In the wake of a significant outage that disrupted Delta Airlines last month, the airline is seeking legal action against cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The outage, triggered by a faulty software update, led to the cancellation of over 5,000 flights and an estimated $500 million in losses for Delta, including customer compensation.

Delta's CEO, Ed Bastian, revealed that the airline plans to pursue damages through litigation. On Friday, Delta officially notified CrowdStrike and Microsoft of its decision to file claims and has retained the services of the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to handle the case.

CrowdStrike has resisted these allegations. Michael Carlinsky, a lawyer representing CrowdStrike, accused Delta of creating a misleading narrative. He claimed that CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz had offered onsite help immediately after the outage but received no response from Delta. Carlinsky argued that Delta's legal threats suggest that CrowdStrike is at fault for Delta's IT management and response.

The outage between July 19 and July 25 severely impacted Delta and other sectors like banking and healthcare, affecting millions of computers running CrowdStrike's software on Microsoft's Windows operating system. CrowdStrike's stock has plummeted by over 36% since the incident.

Carlinsky's letter warned that if Delta proceeds with legal action, it will need to justify to the public and potentially a jury because it did not handle the situation more transparently. He also noted that CrowdStrike's contractual liability is limited to a few million dollars.

Delta did not respond to the letter on Sunday night, but CrowdStrike expressed a desire to resolve the issue collaboratively. As the company prepares to report its fiscal second-quarter results on August 28, it faces additional legal challenges from its shareholders, who have filed a suit seeking damages for the drop in stock value. Microsoft has yet to comment on the ongoing situation.

Read More: Delta Air Lines struggles with Microsoft outage, leading to more cancellations