Aug 01, 2024 10:38:00

Delta Airlines to seek $500 million in damages after CrowdStrike issue causes over 5,000 flights to be canceled

The large-scale CrowdStrike outage that occurred on July 19, 2024 (Japan time)

affected 8.5 million Windows terminals, causing severe damage such as the inability to operate a huge number of systems in the aviation industry and hospitals. Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Airlines, which suffered the greatest damage, revealed that the company suffered losses of $500 million (about 75 billion yen) in five days from the outage and that he would seek damages from CrowdStrike.

Delta CEO: CrowdStrike-Microsoft outage cost the airline $500 million
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/31/delta-ceo-crowdstrike-microsoft-outage-cost-the-airline-500-million.html

Delta suffered $500M loss from CrowdStrike debacle: Ed Bastian

https://nypost.com/2024/07/31/business/delta-suffered-500m-loss-from-crowdstrike-debacle-ed-bastian/

The large-scale CrowdStrike outage that occurred on July 19, 2024 is believed to have been caused by the distribution of problematic files during an update. CrowdStrike is a security company that operates worldwide, with private companies and government agencies as clients, and in the United States, a large-scale outage caused numerous flight cancellations and delays.

Delta Airlines cancels more than 4,000 flights due to CrowdStrike-related outage, severely affecting hospitals and government agencies - GIGAZINE

Delta Airlines was particularly hard hit by the CrowdStrike outage. According to Bastian, more than 5,000 flights were canceled in the five days from July 19 to 25, 2024, the most since 2019. In addition, Delta had to manually reset more than 40,000 servers.

Regarding the impact of the series of outages, Bastian said, 'It cost $500 million in damages over five days.' According to Bastian, this figure includes not only lost revenue due to flight cancellations, but also compensation to customers, which is on the order of tens of millions of dollars (billions of yen) per day. Delta Airlines has stated that it will provide customers affected by the problem with miles and vouchers that can be used on other flights, as well as cover the costs of hotels, meals, etc.

'We have no choice,' Bastian said, and reported that he would seek damages from CrowdStrike. Delta has actually announced that it has invited

David Boies of the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP to file a claim for damages.

Bastian said CrowdStrike has not offered to financially support airlines so far, and criticized the only assistance CrowdStrike has offered so far has been 'free consulting advice.'

Regarding the damage claims, Bastian said, 'We must protect not only our shareholders, but also the Delta brand, its reputation, our customers and our employees.'

A CrowdStrike spokesperson said, 'We have no knowledge of the lawsuit.'