Delta Air Lines details impacts from CrowdStrike outage, calls company apology ‘inadequate’

ATLANTA — Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines submitted new documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission in the follow-up to the global CrowdStrike outage.

In the weeks since the outage, which left Delta reeling for several days as it worked to restore full operations, the company has pushed back on claims by Microsoft and CrowdStrike that they weren’t responsible for the fallout at Delta from the “international disaster” caused by the buggy software update.

While other companies, and even other airlines, restored service within a day or two, Delta remained partly out of service for nearly a week.

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Delta told the companies it was considering taking them to court for what it estimated to be a $500 million loss from the outages that caused them to cancel about 7,000 flights over five days.

Attorneys for both CrowdStrike and Microsoft sent letters, shared with Channel 2 Action News, arguing against responsibility for the losses, specifically highlighting their multiple attempts to help Delta resolve the issues related to the outage, which they said were met with denials of a need for assistance.

Now, Delta has said apologies from CrowdStrike for the outage and its impacts were “vastly inadequate” and that the tech company’s “efforts to minimize the international disaster it caused” were surprising and disappointing.

Delta’s attorneys sent a letter to the company that said the messaging from CrowdStrike after it “caused a catastrophic shutdown of more than eight million computers around the world and disrupted countless companies’ business operations” amounted to a “blame the victim” defense and said it was baseless to suggest Delta was responsible for the faulty software and subsequent crashes.

The airline’s SEC filing, filed Thursday, says the disruption it faced was unacceptable due to the magnitude, and that Delta’s “customers and employees deserve better.”

CrowdStrike’s legal counsel wrote to Delta that while the company apologized for the technical issue, it was “highly disappointed by Delta’s suggestion that CrowdStrike acted inappropriately” and rejected any claims that it was negligent or had purposely committed misconduct during the incident.

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Going into detail, the tech company said they worked tirelessly to help their customers restore systems and resume services, and that they reached out to Delta “within hours of the incident...to offer assistance and ensure Delta was aware of an available remediation.”

CrowdStrike’s attorneys said the company did not respond to several offers to help and was later told by Delta employees that onsite resources for assistance weren’t necessary.

The company also told Delta that if it chooses to pursue legal action against CrowdStrike, it will have to explain to its customers, shareholders and even a jury why “Delta’s competitors, facing similar challenges, all restored operations much faster,” and why they “turned down free onsite help from CrowdStrike professionals who assisted many other customers to restore operations much more quickly than Delta,” among other factors within Delta’s systems and infrastructure.

CrowdStrike’s response was not alone in its arguments against Delta’s summary of the situation.

“Your letter and Delta’s public comments are incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation,” Microsoft lawyer Mark Cheffo said in a letter to Delta attorney David Boies, as reported by the Associated Press. He added that Microsoft, like CrowdStrike, was working to understand “why other airlines were able to fully restore business operations so much faster than Delta.”

In the meantime, Delta is facing multiple lawsuits over its response to the outage for its customers, even as it pushes for compensation from its technology vendors.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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