Delta Air Lines (DL, Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson) is reportedly seeking damages from cyber security firm CrowdStrike and Microsoft following the July 19 outage that disrupted millions of computers and caused thousands of flight cancellations, CNBC reported.
The airline has engaged prominent New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner led by David Boies, although no lawsuit has been filed yet, sources close to the matter told the business news provider, later confirmed by CNN.
Delta has made no formal announcement. It is the first airline to seek legal recourse after the global outage, which was triggered by a flawed software update. The airline reportedly had to cancel about 7,000 flights, resulting in financial losses estimated at between USD350 million and USD500 million. Delta's reliance on Windows-based systems, with about 60% of its critical applications running on Microsoft platforms, exacerbated the impact of the outage.
The US Department of Transportation (DOT) is investigating the incident, which reportedly caused a USD5.4 billion loss for Fortune 500 companies, excluding Microsoft.
Delta Air Lines declined comment.
