Posted on 07/31/24
| News Source: WSJ
Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Ed Bastian said the carrier took a $500 million hit from the CrowdStrike CRWD -1.26%decrease; red down pointing triangle technology outage that hurt its operations.
With more than 5,000 flight cancellations over several days, Delta faced deeper disruption and took days longer than rivals to get back on track after the outage knocked key systems offline. The U.S. Department of Transportation is investigating how the airline handled the disruption and its customer response.
Delta has hired prominent litigator David Boies, chairman of the firm Boies Schiller Flexner, and notified CrowdStrike and Microsoft MSFT -0.96%decrease; red down pointing triangle to prepare for litigation, according to letter s reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Bastian said in a CNBC interview Wednesday from Paris that the airline has no choice but to seek to recover its losses.
“Between not just the loss of revenue, but the tens of millions of dollars per day in compensation and hotels. We did everything we could to take care of our customers over that time,” he said.
CrowdStrike said in a statement: “We are aware of the reporting, but have no knowledge of a lawsuit and have no further comment.” Microsoft didn’t comment.