The Microsoft and CrowdStrike IT outage that started July 19 and severely affected airline operations, particularly those of Delta Air Lines, has cost the carrier $500 million over five days, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said during a Wednesday appearance on CNBC.
Delta in particular struggled to recover from the outage, canceling thousands of flights over the next few days.
“The issue is with Microsoft and CrowdStrike, and we are heavy with both, by far the heaviest in the industry with both, so we got hit the hardest in terms of the recovery ability,” Bastian said on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “People don’t realize that Microsoft and CrowdStrike are the top two competitors around cyber with each other. So they don’t necessarily partner at the same level that we need them to. This is a call to the industry. Everyone talks about making sure big tech is responsible. This cost us half a billion dollars.”
CNBC also reported that Delta has hired prominent attorney David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner to seek damages from the tech companies, but the company has not yet filed a lawsuit.
“We have no choice,” Bastian said, adding that “we are not looking to wipe them out, but we are looking to make certain that we get compensated for however they decide to for whatever it cost us.”
“Over a period of five days, between not just lost revenue but the tens of millions of dollars per day in compensation and hotels, and we did everything we could to take care of our customers over that timeframe,” Bastian added. “If you are going to have priority access to the Delta ecosystem in terms of technology, you have to test this stuff. You can’t come into a mission-critical 24-7 operation and tell us we have a bug. It doesn’t work.”
Bastian also noted that the tech companies “haven’t offered anything” other than free consulting advice. “So, we have to protect our shareholders, our customers, our employees for the damage, not just the cost, but the brand and the reputational damage and the physical.”
Delta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
