Microsoft fired back at Delta Air Lines on Tuesday after the carrier said it would seek damages from the software giant and CrowdStrike for thousands of flight cancellations in the wake of a massive IT outage.
Delta struggled more than rival airlines to recover from the outage, cancelling more than 5,000 flights in the days following the July 19 outage, which was sparked by a botched software update from CrowdStrike and affected millions of computers running Microsoft Windows. It cost the carrier some $500 million, CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week.
Bastian said the Atlanta-based airline, which prides itself on punctuality and positions itself as a premium airline, has “no choice” but to pursue legal action against the two technology companies.
Mark Cheffo, a Dechert partner representing Microsoft, sent a letter Tuesday to attorney David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner. Boies represents Delta and had sent letters on behalf of the airline to CrowdStrike and Microsoft.
“We have reason to believe Microsoft has failed to comply with contractual requirements and otherwise acted in a grossly negligent, indeed willful, manner in connection with the Faulty Update” from CrowdStrike that caused Windows computers to crash, Boies had told Microsoft’s chief legal officer, Hossein Nowbar, in a July 29 letter.
Cheffo wrote in his response that Microsoft empathizes with Delta and its customers on 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,” he said.
The letter bears some similarities to CrowdStrike’s letter rejecting claims from Delta on Sunday. For one, Cheffo wrote, Microsoft offered to help Delta for free. Each day from July 19 to July 23, Microsoft employees said they could help, but Delta turned them away, according to the letter.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emailed Bastian, “who has never replied,” Cheffo wrote.
Cheffo described a letter on July 22, from Microsoft offering help to a Delta employee. The Delta employee wrote back, “All good. Cool will let you know and thank you.”
Altogether, Delta canceled over 5,000 flights in the incident, a tally exceeding the total for all of 2019.
Delta executives said the outage overwhelmed its crew scheduling platform, which matches crews to flights. But Cheffo said Delta doesn’t rely on Windows or Microsoft’s Azure cloud services.
In 2021, IBM announced a multi-year deal with Delta to help the airline implement a hybrid-cloud architecture running on Red Hat’s OpenShift software. In 2022, Amazon said Delta had picked the digital commerce company’s Amazon Web Services unit to be its preferred cloud provider.
“It is rapidly becoming apparent that Delta likely refused Microsoft’s help because the IT system it was most having trouble restoring — its crew-tracking and scheduling system — was being serviced by other technology providers, such as IBM, because it runs on those providers’ systems, and not Microsoft Windows or Azure.”
Bastian said last week Delta had to manually reset 40,000 servers.
Microsoft demands that Delta retain records showing how much technologies from IBM, Amazon and others contributed to the airline’s issues from July 19 to July 24, Cheffo wrote. Spokespeople for IBM and Amazon didn’t immediately provide comment.
He said Microsoft is still trying to figure out why American Airlines, United Airlines and others were able to recover more quickly than Delta.
“Our preliminary review suggests that Delta, unlike its competitors, apparently has not modernized its IT infrastructure, either for the benefit of its customers or for its pilots and flight attendants,” Cheffo wrote.
Delta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.