Microsoft accuses Delta of ignoring CrowdStrike help during flight cancellations

Microsoft has claimed Delta ignored offers of help during the global outage last month caused by a faulty update from cyber security firm CrowdStrike.

Last week, Delta threatened to sue Microsoft and CrowdStrike over the July 19^th outage, which the airline claims hit more than 40,000 of its servers, cost the firm $500 million, and caused thousands of cancelled flights over the course of five days.

CrowdStrike and Microsoft have sent letters back to the Georgia-based airline, both claiming that Delta turned down offers of free help.

According to Microsoft, Delta even ignored an email from its CEO Satya Nadella to Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian.

“Microsoft empathises with Delta and its customers regarding the impact of the CrowdStrike incident. But your letter and Delta’s public comments are incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation,” said Mark Cheffo, co-chair of Dechert’s global litigation practice, in a letter on behalf of Microsoft to Delta’s lawyers.

Cheffo added that even though “Microsoft’s software had not caused the CrowdStrike incident, Microsoft immediately jumped in and offered to assist Delta at no charge.”

He said that Microsoft repeatedly offered assistance from July 19^th through July 23^rd, but each time was turned down.

The big tech firm alleges that Delta refused support because it was “rapidly becoming apparent” that it was the airline’s own “IT system it was most having trouble restoring.”

“Its crew-tracking and scheduling system was serviced by other technology providers, such as IBM because it runs on those providers’ systems, not Microsoft Windows or Azure.”

Microsoft said it was investigating the incident because it did not understand why “other airlines were able to fully restore business operations so much faster than Delta, including American Airlines and United Airlines.”

“Our preliminary review suggests that Delta, unlike its competitors, apparently has not modernised its IT infrastructure, either for the benefit of its customers or for its pilots and flight attendants.”

A company spokesperson or Delta said: “Since 2016, Delta has invested billions of dollars in IT capital expenditures, in addition to the billions spent annually in IT operating costs.”

Since 2016, it has invested billions of dollars in IT capital expenditures, in addition to the billions it spends every year on IT operating costs.

Read: Five lessons from the CrowdStrike Windows IT outage