By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – CrowdStrike Inc on Sunday rejected Delta Air Lines Inc’s claim that it was to blame for flight disruptions after a global outage on July 19 caused by a faulty software update, suggesting its potential liability was minimal.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian said last week that the outage cost the U.S. airline $500 million and that it plans to take legal action to seek compensation from the cybersecurity firm.
CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:) renewed its apology to the airline, but said in a letter from outside counsel that it was “deeply disappointed with Delta’s suggestion that CrowdStrike acted inappropriately and strongly rejects any allegation that it was grossly negligent or engaged in misconduct.”
Delta canceled more than 6,000 flights over six days, affecting more than 500,000 passengers. The company is facing an investigation by the U.S. Department of Transportation into why it took so much longer to recover from the outage than other airlines.
“Any liability incurred by CrowdStrike is contractually limited to a single-digit million amount,” the CrowdStrike letter said.
Delta declined to comment on CrowdStrike’s letter.
Within hours of the outage, CrowdStrike reached out to Delta to offer assistance.
“Furthermore, CrowdStrike’s CEO personally reached out to Delta’s CEO to offer on-site assistance, but received no response,” the letter read.
CrowdStrike offered “free consulting advice to help us,” Bastian told CNBC last week.
Delta told U.S. lawmakers last week in a letter seen by Reuters that the flawed CrowdStrike software update “affected more than half of Delta’s computers, including many Delta workstations at every airport in the Delta network.”
“Delta’s complex IT system, which distributes and synchronizes all of our data, including the data that feeds our crew tracking software and portals, requires manual retrieval,” the letter added.
The CrowdStrike letter added that if Delta sues, it will need to answer “why Delta’s competitors, facing similar challenges, were able to restore operations much faster” and “why Delta denied free on-site assistance from CrowdStrike professionals who helped many other customers restore operations much faster than Delta.”
“Publicly pretending to file a baseless lawsuit against CrowdStrike as a long-standing partner is not constructive for either party,” a CrowdStrike spokesperson said. “We hope Delta will agree to work collaboratively to reach a resolution.”
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