A Delta Air Lines plane is parked at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle, Washington, on June 19, 2024.
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Microsoft fight back Delta Airlines On Tuesday, the operator said it would seek compensation from the software giant and mass strike Massive IT outage resulted in thousands of flight cancellations.
Delta has had a harder time recovering from the outage than rival airlines, canceling more than 5,000 flights in the days after the July 19 incident, which was triggered by a botched software update from CrowdStrike , affecting millions of computers running Microsoft Windows. CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week that the carrier lost about $500 million.
Bastian said the Atlanta-based airline, which prides itself on punctuality and positions itself as a premium airline, had “no choice” but to take legal action against the two technology companies.
Mark Cheffo, a Dechert partner representing Microsoft, sent a letter to David Boies, an attorney at Boies Schiller Flexner, on Tuesday. Boyce represents Delta and sent letters to CrowdStrike and Microsoft on the airline’s behalf.
Boyce told Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Hussain, “We have reason to believe that Microsoft failed to comply with its contractual requirements and demonstrated gross negligence, even intentional conduct, in the erroneous update of CrowdStrike” that caused Windows computers to crash. Nowbar, in a letter dated July 29.
Cheffo wrote in response that Microsoft sympathizes with Delta Air Lines and its customers regarding the impact of the CrowdStrike incident. “But your letter and Delta’s public comments are incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation,” he said.
The response is similar to CrowdStrike’s Sunday letter denying Delta’s claim. Cheffo wrote that Microsoft was willing to help Delta for free. The letter stated that from July 19 to July 23, Microsoft employees offered to provide assistance every day, but Delta Air Lines turned them down.
Sheff wrote that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sent Bastian an email and “Bastian never responded.” CrowdStrike also said CEO George Kurtz had contacted his counterparts at Delta Air Lines “but has received no response.”
Cheffo described a July 22 letter from Microsoft offering assistance to Delta Air Lines employees. The Delta employee responded: “Everything is fine. Cool will let you know and thank you.”
Delta executives said the outage resulted in more flight cancellations than in all of 2019, overwhelming its crew scheduling platform that matches crews to flights. But Chefo said Delta doesn’t rely on Windows or Microsoft’s Azure cloud services.
In 2021, IBM announced multi-year agreement Worked with Delta Air Lines to help the airline implement a hybrid cloud architecture running on Red Hat OpenShift software. 2022, Amazon explain Delta Air Lines has selected the digital commerce company’s Amazon Web Services unit as its preferred cloud provider.
“It’s clear that Delta may have declined Microsoft’s help because the IT system it has the most difficulty recovering – its crew tracking and scheduling system – is being serviced by other technology providers such as IBM because it runs on These provider systems are not Microsoft Windows or Azure.
Bastian said last week that Delta had to manually reset 40,000 servers.
Microsoft requires Delta Air Lines to keep records showing how much technology comes from International Business Machines Corporation, Amazon Cheffo wrote that between July 19 and 24, others contributed to the airline’s problems. Spokespeople for IBM and Amazon had no immediate comment.
Cheffo says Microsoft is still trying to figure out why American airlines, United Airlines Other companies are recovering faster than Delta.
“Our preliminary review indicates that, unlike its competitors, Delta Air Lines is clearly not modernizing its IT infrastructure, either for the benefit of its customers or its pilots and flight attendants,” Chefo wrote.
Delta Air Lines did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bastian told CNBC last week, “If you want to be a priority in the Delta ecosystem on the technology side, you have to test these things. You can’t run mission-critical operations 24/7 and tell us there’s a bug.”
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