A Delta Airlines Airbus A319-114 aircraft taxis at Los Angeles International Airport after arriving from Las Vegas on May 5, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
Kevin Carter | Getty Images
Delta airlines On Thursday he said last month Mass coup The blackout and the resulting massive flight cancellations cost it some $550 million and it reiterated that it is seeking damages against the company, as well as against Microsoft.
The financial impact includes a $380 million revenue hit in the current quarter “driven primarily by refunding customers for canceled flights and providing compensation to customers in the form of cash and SkyMiles,” the Atlanta-based airline said in a securities filing.
The incident, which resulted in about 7,000 flights being cancelled, also resulted in $170 million in expenses “associated with the technology-driven disruption and subsequent operational recovery,” the airline said, adding that its fuel bill will likely be $50 million lower due to the cancelled flights.
Delta had a harder time than its competitors recovering from the July 19 service outage, which knocked out millions of Windows-based machines around the world. The outages came at the height of the summer travel season, stranding thousands of Delta customers, a rare incident for the airline that promotes itself as a premium carrier that earns top marks for reliability.
“An operational disruption of this length and magnitude is unacceptable, and our customers and employees deserve better,” CEO Ed Bastian said in the statement. “Since the incident, our people have returned the operation to an industry-leading position that is consistent with the level of performance our customers expect from Delta.”
Delta's cancellations in the days after the outage exceeded its total for all of 2019. The U.S. Department of Transportation said last month that it is investigating Delta's response to the outage and flight cancellations.
CrowdStrike responded in a statement Thursday that Delta “continues to push a misleading narrative” and said the company's chief security officer was in “direct contact” with Delta's chief information and security officer “within hours of the incident, providing information and offering support.”
In a letter to CrowdStrike's attorney on Thursday, Delta attorney David Boies said 1.3 million customers were affected by the outage and 37,000 Delta computers were shut down.
Earlier this week, lawyers for CrowdStrike and Microsoft responded to Delta saying they had reached out to offer assistance. On Wednesday, Microsoft suggested that Delta has not invested enough in its technology compared to its rivals.
“If CrowdStrike truly seeks to avoid a lawsuit from Delta, then it must accept real responsibility for its actions and compensate Delta for the severe harm it caused to its business, reputation and goodwill,” Boies said in the letter to CrowdStrike on Thursday.
About 60% of Delta’s “mission-critical applications” and data rely on Microsoft and CrowdStrike, he said, adding that the outage “required significant human intervention by trained crew specialists to get Delta’s people and aircraft to the right places to resume normal, safe operation.”
