Delta Air Lines (DL, Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson) will pursue legal claims of at least USD500 million against CrowdStrike after a July 19 content configuration update went awry, resulting in a systems crash and IT systems worldwide shutting down, including at Delta, which says it experienced around 7,000 flight cancellations over five days because of it.

“An operational disruption of this length and magnitude is unacceptable, and our customers and employees deserve better," said Delta CEO Ed Bastian in an August 9 SEC filing. ch-aviation flagged the impending lawsuit earlier this month.

CrowdStrike's update caused a coding error that blanked out the screens of millions of Windows computers worldwide. Delta estimates a USD380 million direct revenue impact from the outage, primarily due to refunding customers and providing compensation in the form of cash and SkyMiles. The airline also estimates recovery costs of around USD170 million, primarily due to customer expense reimbursements and crew-related costs. Offsetting these are an estimated USD50 million in fuel savings from the cancelled flights.

Other airlines impacted by the outage included Vueling Airlines, Ryanair, Virgin Australia, SpiceJet, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines, and Singapore Airlines. However, Delta's reliance on Windows-based systems, with about 60% of its critical applications running on Microsoft platforms, exacerbated the impact of the outage.

Since the incident, Delta has been highly critical of CrowdStrike and its recovery response. In an August 4 letter from CrowdStrike's counsel to Delta's counsel, Michael Carlinsky of the New York-based Quinn Emanuel law firm rejected assertions that the IT firm had acted inappropriately, was grossly negligent, or had committed wilful misconduct in relation to the outage. He called the suggestions it had done so "disappointing."

"Within hours of the incident, CrowdStrike reached out to Delta to offer assistance and ensure Delta was aware of an available remediation," the letter reads. "In addition, CloudStrike's CEO personally reached out to Delta's CEO to offer onsite assistance but received no response." Carlinsky said Delta's decision to turn down offers of help was one of many questions the airline needed to answer regarding its management of the outage.

"While litigation would be unfortunate, CrowdStrike will respond aggressively, if forced to do so, in order to protect its shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders."

Separately, a lawsuit was filed on August 6 in the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, against Delta on behalf of Delta customers impacted by the outage. The matter - Arben Bajra, John Brennan, Asher Einhorn, and Melanie Susman, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated v. Delta Air Lines Inc - alleges the airline refused or ignored requests for prompt refunds for their cancelled or delayed flights. It also alleges Delta failed to provide all impacted passengers with meal, hotel, and ground transportation vouchers and continues to refuse or ignore requests for reimbursements of those unexpected expenses.