While Delta Air Lines has decided on getting compensation for the July 19th CrowdStrike led outage from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft, company CEO Satya Nadella believes the air line company’s issues have less to do with Windows than its own aging IT infrastructure.
In the wake of the massive CrowdStrike outage that crippled multiple industries, Delta was among a few that struggled longer to get back on its feet following over 5,000 canceled flights and upwards of $500 million in damages. As a result the outage, Delta Air Lines is now in the early stages of seeking damages from both Microsoft and CrowdStrike hiring hired prominent attorney David Boise to put together a case.
However, both CrowdStrike and Microsoft have recently rebuffed Delta CEO Ed Bastian’s narrative of fault. Both Microsoft and CrowdStrike have recently responded to Delta’s characterization of the response efforts as being less than transparent and Microsoft executives have gone on record estimating that Delta’s lack of transparency during recovery efforts points to larger, non-Windows systems related issue.
In a new letter to Delta’s legal representative Boise, Microsoft reiterates that Windows systems such as Windows Server were not the cause of the outage, but when the company was made aware of the incident, it immediately offer assistance that was rebuffed on several occasions by Delta Air Lines.
“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 19th outage. Each day that followed from July 19th through July 23rd, 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.”
Mark Cheffo – co-chair of Dechert Global
On the Delta was forced to canceled upwards of 1,100 flights, company employees responded to Microsoft outreach declaring that things were “all good” in the recovery department.
Furthermore, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella personally reached out to Bastian to communicate the company’s willingness to help Delta Air Lines get back ‘online’ as quickly as possible, but received no follow up from the air line company.
Admittedly, Delta Air Lines had a lot of fires to put out and were also busy keeping an eye on their future being the official airline of the US Olympic teams chosen transportation to Paris later in the month.
Perhaps, in an effort to quickly snuff out Boise case before it gains any real air, Microsoft’s legal defense is arguing that Delta’s constant refusal of help from Microsoft warrants a consideration of mitigating factors outside of simply a Windows services issue.
“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,”
Mark Cheffo – co-chair of Dechert Global
Microsoft also claims that Delta’s aging IT infrastructure compounded matters further as the airline scrambled to apply multiple non-Windows solutions to address the initial CrowdStrike update bug, and that scrambling ultimately led to longer delays than the company’s competitors suffered.
