CrowdStrike Hits Back in Heated Spat With Delta Over Global Tech Outage
The cybersecurity company said the airline should take the blame after it struggled to rebound from a software outage that caused disruptions worldwide.
A legal dispute is heating up between the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike and Delta Air Lines over a global technology outage last month.
In a letter sent to Delta on Sunday that was reviewed by The New York Times, CrowdStrike’s lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan pushed back against claims that it was solely responsible for the thousands of flights that the airline canceled after the outage.
A flawed software update issued by CrowdStrike led to widespread technological disruptions, affecting many businesses, including airlines. But while many carriers recovered within a day or two, Delta struggled to restore its operations. The airline canceled about 5,000 flights, about 37 percent of its schedule, over four days, according to FlightAware, a service that monitors air travel. About three in four of the airline’s remaining flights were delayed.
In a message to employees on Friday, Delta’s chief executive, Ed Bastian, said the company had hired a prominent law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, to pursue legal claims against CrowdStrike. Mr. Bastian had estimated in a CNBC interview that the outage cost the airline $500 million, including tens of millions of dollars per day in compensation and hotels.
