CrowdStrike Says It’s Not to Blame for Delta’s Meltdown

Skift Take

A lawyer representing CrowdStrike said Delta’s threat of litigation has “contributed to a misleading narrative that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta’s IT decisions and response to the outage.”

Meghna Maharishi

CrowdStrike said Delta did not accept its offer of onsite help during the carrier’s meltdown that led to thousands of flight cancellations and delays. 

In his first public comments since the meltdown, Delta CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week that the airline would “have no choice” but to sue CrowdStrike. 

Bastian said he expects Delta to take a $500 million hit for the disruptions that stem not only from a loss in revenue, but also the millions of dollars in compensation it owes to passengers. 

“We thought we had the best between Microsoft and CrowdStrike,” Bastian said on CNBC. “We had 40,000 servers we had to retouch and reset.”

Michael Carlinsky, a CrowdStrike lawyer and co-managing partner of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, wrote to Delta’s lawyer David Boies on Sunday that the “public threat of litigation distracts from this work and has contributed to a misleading narrative that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta’s IT decisions and response to the outage.”

In the letter, Carlinsky also requested Delta to answer why its competitors were able to recover from the outage much more quickly. While a CrowdStrike software update caused airlines worldwide to cancel thousands of flights, most recovered within a couple days. 

Delta declined to comment on the letter.

Delta’s Response to Meltdown Under Scrutiny

Carlinsky also wrote that CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz reached out to Bastian to offer onsite assistance, but Bastian did not respond. Then, CrowdStrike followed up on the offer and Delta said onsite assistance was not needed.

“Within hours of the incident, CrowdStrike reached out to Delta to offer assistance and ensure Delta was aware of an available remediation,” Carlinksy wrote. 

Last week, Delta hired prominent attorney David Boies, who is chairman of the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, as it looks to seek damages from CrowdStrike. 

While Delta’s operations have returned to normal, the carrier has received some scrutiny for its handling of the meltdown. In its public communications, Delta blamed the days-long disruptions on CrowdStrike, even though it was the only major U.S. carrier struggling to bounce back from the July 19 outage. 

And on his CNBC appearance, which was nearly a week after the meltdown ended, Bastian also blamed CrowdStrike. He said Delta is heavily dependent on Microsoft and CrowdStrike and its crew scheduling systems took the longest to synchronize, making it difficult to get in contact with crew members. 

The Department of Transportation is also investigating Delta’s response to the disruptions and its customer service practices. Bastian told employees in a letter last week that Delta would conduct an intensive analysis on the meltdown and its response. 

Carlinsky wrote that CrowdStrike would respond aggressively to potential litigation from Delta and demanded that the carrier preserve all documents, records and communications related to the IT outage and subsequent meltdown.