After the massive outage in July, airline Delta claimed that CrowdStrike was responsible for the delayed and cancelled flights. CrowdStrike does not go along with that, saying it has “minimal potential liability.”
CrowdStrike responded by letter to Delta CEO Ed Bastian’s complaint. The airline cancelled 6,000 flights in six days, which Bastian said amounted to damages of up to $500 million (€458 million). Delta was forced to delay flights after computer systems went down due to an update to its CrowdStrike security platform.
The letter reiterates CrowdStrike’s apology to Delta. Yet the letter, drafted by an attorney, reveals that CrowdStrike is “highly disappointed by Delta’s suggestion that CrowdStrike acted inappropriately and strongly rejects any allegation that it was grossly negligent or committed misconduct.” Moreover, any damage amount of $500 million is unrealistic: “any liability by CrowdStrike is contractually capped at an amount in the single-digit millions.”
Last week, it became clear that Delta had hired a top lawyer to investigate the possibility of compensation for the loss. There is no official charge or lawsuit yet, but Delta is looking at whether CrowdStrike and Microsoft are somehow responsible. Delta has not yet responded to CrowdStrike’s new letter.
Delta allegedly refused help
The letter makes it clear that CrowdStrike offered the airline help within hours of the outage. “Additionally, CrowdStrike’s CEO personally reached out to Delta’s CEO to offer onsite assistance, but received no response,” the letter states.
If the case leads to litigation, CrowdStrike already has questions for Delta. The airline would then have to answer “why Delta’s competitors, facing similar challenges, all restored operations much faster” and “why Delta turned down free onsite help from CrowdStrike professionals who assisted many other customers to restore operations much more quickly than Delta.”
Tip: Microsoft gives advice after CrowdStrike chaos to prevent repeat