Delta’s threats to take legal action against CrowdStrike and Microsoft appears to be blowing up in its face. Yesterday, CrowdStrike’s outside counsel sent a scathing letter to the Atlanta based carrier and now, Microsoft has followed suit. It’s clear that the two companies aren’t going to let Delta place the blame for its operational meltdown on them without taking responsibility of their own.
Delta has appeared unwilling to take any responsibility for its part in the operational meltdown and instead, in a letter thanking employees, CEO Ed Bastian announced the airline had hired counsel to look at suing for the roughly $500 million in losses the airline experienced due to the incident.
The next volley in this battle has been fired and comes in the form of an extremely stern letter from Microsoft’s legal counsel. As first reported by One Mile at a Time, the Microsoft letter (which you can find in full on the site) appears to corroborate CrowdStrike’s accusations that Delta declined help from both companies on multiple occasions.
In the letter, Microsoft’s legal counsel states:
“That Microsoft empathizes with Delta and its customers regarding 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.”
Microsoft Legal Counsel to Delta Air Lines
The letter goes on to further outline five items that show “the truth is very different from the false picture you (referring to Delta’s outside counsel) and Delta have sought to paint.” The five items are listed below:
- Even though Microsoft’s software had not caused the CrowdStrike incident, Microsoft immediately jumped in and offered to assist Delta at no charge following the July 19 outage;
- Each day that followed from July 19 through July 23, Microsoft employees repeated their offers to help Delta. Each time, Delta turned down Microsoft’s offers to help, even though Microsoft would not have charged Delta for this assistance.
- On the morning of July 22, a Microsoft employee, aware that Delta was having more difficulty recovering than any other airline, messaged a Delta employee to say, “just checking in and no pressure to reply, but if you can think of anything your Microsoft team can be helping with today, just say the word.” The Delta employee replied, saying “all good. Cool will let you know and thank you.” Despite this assessment that things were “all good,” public reports indicate that Delta canceled more than 1,100 flights on July 22 and more than 500 flights on July 23.
- More senior Microsoft executives also repeatedly reached out to help their counterparts at Delta, again with similar results. Among others, on Wednesday, July 24, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emailed Delta CEO Ed Bastian, who has never replied.
- In fact, 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.
The letter ends with a demand that Delta save a variety of documents and correspondence related to the CrowdStrike IT outage and subsequent recovery efforts and operational meltdown as well as offering to schedule time to talk.
Delta’s last public comment on the “CrowdStrike disruption” came on July 26th and, in the weeks since, it’s been radio silence from the airline externally. I can’t imagine that the airline expected this level of pushback from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft but, given that Delta has refused to accept any blame here makes me wonder if leadership genuinely thinks that the airline did nothing wrong.
It will be interesting to see if Delta decides to drop its pursuit of damages or if a case is filed in court. Based on the information contained in the crowdStrike and Microsoft letters, I can’t imagine that Delta would want all of its dirty laundry aired at trial. The most likely outcome here is a settlement which is far less than the $500 million Delta is looking for. Now we just have to wait and see how the airline responds.
Summary
As first reported by One Mile at a Time, Microsoft has responded to Delta’s legal threats against the company with a sternly worded letter outlining Delta’s refusal of help offered by Microsoft. It’s fairly safe to say that Delta didn’t expect this level of pushback from either company and it will be interesting to watch how this all plays out.
Get your popcorn ready, this is just getting good.
