Delta Air Lines has reportedly hired a lawyer to seek compensation from Microsoft and CrowdStrike after Windows computers with CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity features crashed around the world this month, resulting in thousands of delayed and cancelled flights as computers faced the “blue screen of death.”Delta hasn’t filed a lawsuit just yet, but the company plans to seek damages from Microsoft and CrowdStrike because of the disruption its normal business operations beginning July 19, CNBC reports. Delta has hired attorney David Boies, who previously fought against Microsoft on behalf of the FTC in its antitrust case against the tech giant. Delta declined to comment.The outage, caused by a faulty CrowdStrike update at the Windows kernel level, has cost Delta anywhere from $350 million to half a billion dollars, the outlet noted. The airline is based out of Atlanta, Georgia at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which is the busiest airport in the world. Delta has reportedly cancelled nearly 7,000 flights in total because of the outage, and is tackling nearly 200,000 refund or reimbursement requests, according to the report.Delta was hit particularly hard by the CrowdStrike crash because “upward of half” of its IT systems were Windows machines using CrowdStrike. The airline said it had to manually repair and reboot each affected computer.
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The New York Times reported that Delta cancelled about 1,300 flights per day on July 19 and in the two days immediately following the outage, which amounted to roughly a third of all Delta flights within that period. After a report surfaced that Delta was initially only offering flight credits instead of full refunds, US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg clarified in a video in the wake of the CrowdStrike crash that airlines are required to offer cash refunds for such cancellations.”Airlines are required to offer refunds,” Buttigieg said. “If you proactively choose that you want a credit, that’s one thing. But the airline has to offer you cash. If they don’t, let us know because we’ll follow up.”
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About four days after the CrowdStrike Windows crash, the US Department of Transportation announced it was opening an investigation into Delta to make sure its customers are treated fairly. Delta said it’s added more expense reimbursement types to its list of acceptable options for those impacted between July 19 and July 28. It’s also waived baggage fees and seat fees for customers who were booked to fly during that period, regardless of whether their flights were delayed or cancelled. Delta has since recovered its operations and is only seeing 2% of its flights delayed and just four flights cancelled on Tuesday as of 7:30 a.m. ET, according to FlightAware data. On Saturday, about a week after the IT outage, Delta saw 14% of its flights delayed but only cancelled two, according to the flight tracking site.
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