A Delta Airlines Airbus A319-114 aircraft taxis at Los Angeles Oecumenical Airport after arriving from Las Vegas on May 5, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
Kevin Carter | Getty Images
Delta Air Roads on Thursday said last month’s CrowdStrike outage and subsequent mass flight cancellations cost it some $550 million and repeated that it is pursuing damages against the company as well as Microsoft.
The financial impact includes a $380 million gross income hit in the current quarter “primarily driven by refunding customers for cancelled flights and providing customer compensation in the form of liquidate and SkyMiles,” the Atlanta-based airline said in a securities filing.
The incident, in which it canceled some 7,000 flights, also meant a $170 million expense “associated with the technology-driven outage and following operational recovery,” the carrier said, adding that its fuel bill will likely be $50 million bring because of the scrubbed flights.
Delta struggled more than its competitors to recover from the July 19 outage, which drew millions of Windows-based machines offline around the world. The disruptions occurred at the height of the summer travel season, stranding thousands of Delta buyers, a rare incident for the carrier that markets itself as a premium carrier that gets top marks for reliability.
“An operational disruption of this thoroughly and magnitude is unacceptable, and our customers and employees deserve better,” CEO Ed Bastian said in the filing. “Since the incident, our people experience returned the operation to an industry-leading position that is consistent with the level of performance our customers expect from Delta.”
Delta’s terminations in the days after the outage topped its tally for all of 2019. The U.S. Department of Transportation last month said it is investigating Delta’s rejoinder to the outage and flight cancellations.
CrowdStrike responded in a statement on Thursday that Delta “continues to push a misleading recital” and said that the company’s chief security officer was in “direct contact” with Delta’s chief information and fastness officer “within hours of the incident, providing information and offering support.”
In a letter to CrowdStrike’s attorney on Thursday, Delta’s mouthpiece David Boies said 1.3 million customers were affected by the outage and that it shut down 37,000 Delta computers.
CrowdStrike and Microsoft solicitors earlier this week fired back at Delta, saying they reached out to offer Delta help. Microsoft on Wednesday presented that Delta hasn’t invested enough in its technology compared with rivals.
“If CrowdStrike genuinely seeks to keep a lawsuit by Delta, then it must accept real responsibility for its actions and compensate Delta for the severe damage it motived to Delta’s business, reputation, and goodwill,” Boies said in the letter to CrowdStrike on Thursday.
About 60% of Delta’s “mission-critical uses” and their data depend on Microsoft and CrowdStrike, he said, adding that the disruption “required significant human intervention by skilled team specialists to get Delta people and aircraft to the right locations to resume normal, safe operation.”