A CrowdStrike outage last month that caused mass flight cancellations and customer compensation in the form of both cash and SkyMiles has reportedly cost Delta Air Lines $550 million: $380 million in revenue and $170 million in associated expenses. As such, the carrier plans to pursue legal action against both CrowdStrike and Microsoft to recoup its costs.
The incident led to the cancellation of approximately 7,000, flights impacting 1.3 million customers, which caused mass confusion to reschedule. Delta, more than its competitors, suffered because of the Windows-based outage that took down operations around the world on July 19—both in terms of the length and magnitude of the disruption, which shut down 37,000 Delta computers.
More than half of Delta’s mission-critical applications and data depend on Microsoft and CrowdStrike. The U.S. Department of Transportation is investigating Delta’s response to the outage and related flight cancellations.
CrowdStrike has noted that its chief security officer was in direct contact with Delta’s chief information and security officer to provide information and support within hours of the incident and noted that Delta “continues to push a misleading narrative,” that they need to invest more in their technology.
