Delta Air Lines has rejected British Airways’ claim of responsibility for the flight disruptions that occurred after a global outage on July 19, attributing the incident to a faulty update and downplaying its potential liability. Delta CEO Ed Bastian stated last week that the outage cost the airline $500 million, prompting plans for legal action to seek compensation from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
CrowdStrike acknowledged apologizing to Delta but firmly denied any wrongdoing. In a letter from its outside counsel, CrowdStrike expressed disappointment in Delta’s implication of misconduct, rejecting allegations of gross negligence.
The outage forced Delta to cancel over 6,000 flights over six days, affecting more than 500,000 passengers. The U.S. Department of Transportation is investigating why Delta’s recovery from the outage was significantly slower than that of other airlines.
The CrowdStrike letter stated, “Any liability to CrowdStrike is contractually limited to a single-digit million sum.”
Delta has declined to comment on the letter from CrowdStrike.
Immediately after the outage, CrowdStrike reached out to Delta to offer assistance. “CrowdStrike’s CEO personally reached out to Delta’s CEO to offer on-site assistance, but received no response,” the letter stated. Bastian told CNBC that CrowdStrike had offered “free consulting advice to help us.”
In a letter to U.S. lawmakers last week, Delta indicated that the faulty CrowdStrike software update “affected more than half of Delta’s computers, including multiple Delta workstations at every airport in the Delta network.” Delta explained that its complex IT system requires manual recovery to synchronize and distribute data, including crew tracking software.
CrowdStrike’s letter questioned why Delta’s competitors, facing similar challenges, restored operations more quickly and why Delta declined CrowdStrike’s free on-site assistance. “Publicly pretending to file a baseless lawsuit against CrowdStrike as a long-standing partner is not constructive for either party. We hope Delta will agree to work collaboratively to reach a resolution,” said a CrowdStrike spokesperson.
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