Last month’s global IT outage on 19 July affected a number of airlines including Ryanair, Vueling Airlines, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Australia.
ADVERTISEMENTCrowdStrike has rejected Delta Air Lines’ claim that it is to blame for flight issues following the worldwide Microsoft outage on 19 July caused by a CrowdStrike update problem. CrowdStrike instead insisted that it had minimal potential liability for the subsequent disruptions.
This follows Delta CEO Ed Bastian’s revelations that the IT outage had meant a $500m (€454.4m) expense for the airline, and that it would be pursuing legal action against CrowdStrike for compensation. The $500m includes reimbursements as well as hotel and related transport expenditures.
Delta had to cancel more than 6,000 flights in six days, which affected more than 500,000 passengers. Some 40,000 systems also had to be manually restarted following the outage. It is now also the subject of a US Transportation Department investigation, which will look deeper into the reasons for its recovery delay.
The Microsoft IT outage on 19 July also disrupted several other airlines, such as Vueling Airlines, Ryanair, Virgin Australia, SpiceJet, KLM, American Airlines, United Airlines and Singapore Airlines amongst others.
Apart from the airline industry, it also affected retail, healthcare, banking, transport, broadcasting, communications and several other sectors.
In response, CrowdStrike sent a letter to Delta through an external lawyer, Michael Carlinsky, who is a co-managing partner at Los Angeles-based law firm Quinn, Emanuel Urquhart and Sullivan.
The letter said: “CrowdStrike reiterates its apology to Delta, its employees and its customers and is empathetic to the circumstances they face. However, CrowdStrike is highly disappointed in Delta’s suggestion that CrowdStrike acted inappropriately and strongly rejects any allegation that it was grossly negligent or committed wilful misconduct with respect to the Channel File 291 incident. Your suggestion that CrowdStrike failed to do testing and validation is contradicted by the very information on which you rely from CrowdStrike’s Preliminary Post Incident Review.
“CrowdStrike worked tirelessly to help its customers restore impacted systems and resume services to their customers. Within hours of the incident, CrowdStrike reached out to Delta to offer assistance and ensured that Delta was aware of an available remediation. To this day CrowdStrike continues to work closely and professionally with the Delta information security team.”
CrowdStrike also revealed that its CEO had personally reached out to the Delta CEO offering free onsite support, but had not gotten a reply. On following up, Delta had informed CrowdStrike that onsite resources were not necessary.
Regarding Delta’s threat of seeking damages from CrowdStrike, the latter said that such an attempt would lead to a “misleading narrative” that CrowdStrike was to blame for Delta’s own response to the outage and subsequent decisions.
It also said in the letter: “Should Delta pursue this path, Delta will have to explain to the public, its shareholders, and ultimately a jury why CrowdStrike took responsibility for its actions – swiftly, transparently and constructively – while Delta did not.”
What is Delta doing to support customers following the IT outage
Following the outage, Delta is offering flight cancellation and extended delay returns, where customers who have faced disrupted travel can opt to cancel their trips through the Fly Delta app or Delta’s website. The airline will automatically refund these customers for the portion of their journey that they have not flown.
Delta is also offering a no questions asked trip cancellation, with passengers who have trips booked between 19 and 28 July who are hesitating to travel can ask for a refund or cancel their trip without having to provide any additional reasons. In some cases, refunds are also applicable for tickets bought on or before 23 July.
Delta is also offering out-of-pocket reimbursement for travellers who have faced flight cancellations or considerable delays in flights between 19 July and 28 July. This includes things like other airline tickets in the same cabin class or lower, rental cars, bus and train tickets and more.
