CrowdStrike Alleges Delta CEO Refused Assistance During Major Outage

Following the catastrophic system outage that resulted in thousands of canceled flights and a federal investigation into the U.S. airline last month, CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. claims that Delta Air Lines Inc.'s leadership did not reply to an offer for assistance.

The accusation, made in a letter dated August 4 by the technology company's lawyers, expands on CrowdStrike's assertion from the previous week that Delta turned down its several requests for assistance. According to CrowdStrike, George Kurtz, the company's CEO, made an effort to get in touch with Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Airlines.

The letter was signed by Michael Carlinsky, co-managing partner of QuinnEmanuelUrquhart&Sullivan, and stated that CrowdStrike's CEO had personally reached out to Delta's CEO to offer onsite assistance, but had received no response.

CrowdStrike expressed its hope that Delta will "agree to work cooperatively to find a resolution" in a different email.

According to a spokesman for Delta, the company has not responded to the letter from CrowdStrike. However, the spokesperson brought attention to Bastian's previous remarks made to CNBC, in which he mentioned taking legal action to obtain monetary compensation for lost income, passenger compensation, and reputational harm.

The airline based in Atlanta, Georgia, suffered the most, taking several days to resume regular flying operations following the disruption. After postponing almost 5,500 flights in the days that followed the original CrowdStrike outage that affected computers running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system, Delta said it incurred a $500 million cost.

Additionally, as stated in the letter, "any liability by CrowdStrike is contractually capped at an amount in the single-digit millions."

Spirit Airlines Inc. reported that the mid-July outage will have a negative impact on third quarter operating profits of $7.2 million. In the meantime, Tony Fernandes, a co-founder of AirAsia, one of the biggest low-cost carriers in Southeast Asia, has also sought payment for the interruption.