Microsoft $MSFT is turning the blame back on Delta for how it handled the global IT outage in July that cost the airline $500 million — and says its chief executive even reached out to help.
Microsoft said Delta "likely refused" its help because its worst hit IT systems is serviced by other providers
Microsoft $MSFT is turning the blame back on Delta for how it handled the global IT outage in July that cost the airline $500 million — and says its chief executive even reached out to help.
In a letter on behalf of Microsoft, Mark Cheffo, co-chair of Dechert LLP’s global litigation practice, says the tech giant “empathizes with Delta and its customers regarding the impact of the CrowdStrike $CRWD incident.” But the airline’s blame placed on the tech giant, Cheffo says, is “incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation.”
During the outage, which was caused by a bug in cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike’s software update, the airline had to cancel over 5,000 flights and manually reset 40,000 servers, Delta chief executive Ed Bastian said. The outage took Microsoft Windows systems around the world offline. Bastian called Microsoft “the most fragile platform,” and compared it to peers, saying: “When was the last time you heard about a big outage at Apple $AAPL,” during an interview with CNBC.
However, Cheffo says, even though Microsoft didn’t cause the outage, the company “immediately jumped in and offered to assist Delta at no charge following the July 19 outage.” From then until July 23, Cheffo says the tech giant’s “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.”
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella also reached out to Bastian to offer help on July 24, Cheffo says, but the Delta CEO “never replied.” Therefore, Cheffo says, it’s “likely” Delta was refusing 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 $IBM,” and not Microsoft’s.
Delta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Microsoft declined to comment further on the situation.
CrowdStrike has also pushed back on Delta’s blame for the tech outage, saying it reached out to the airline to offer on-site computer help. Both CrowdStrike and Microsoft have asked Delta to preserve documents, records, and communications related to the outage, and have said they will respond to litigation.
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