Delta Air Lines Sues CrowdStrike for July Outage

By David Shepardson

Washington (Reuters) – Delta Air Lines filed a lawsuit against cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike in Georgia state court on Friday after a global outage in July led to mass flight cancellations, impacting 1.3 million customers and costing the airline over $500 million.

Delta's lawsuit, submitted to Fulton County Superior Court, described the software update from CrowdStrike as "catastrophic" and alleged that the firm "forced untested and faulty updates" on its clients, causing over 8.5 million Microsoft Windows computers worldwide to crash.

The incident, which occurred on July 19, resulted in worldwide flight cancellations and affected various industries including banking, healthcare, media, and hospitality.

CrowdStrike did not respond to requests for comment late Friday, but had previously rejected Delta's criticism and indicated limited liability.

Delta, a customer of CrowdStrike products since 2022, asserted that the outage led to the cancellation of 7,000 flights, affecting 1.3 million passengers over five days. The airline claimed CrowdStrike is responsible for over $500 million in direct losses, as well as unspecified lost profits, expenses, legal fees, and damage to reputation and future revenue.

The U.S. Transportation Department has initiated an investigation into the incident.

Delta's lawsuit stated, "If CrowdStrike had tested the faulty update on even one computer before deployment, the computer would have crashed. Because the faulty update could not be removed remotely, CrowdStrike crippled Delta's business and caused significant delays for Delta customers."

Delta emphasized its investment of billions in state-of-the-art technology solutions for the airline sector as part of its IT planning and infrastructure. CrowdStrike questioned why Delta experienced worse outcomes compared to other airlines.

Recently, a senior CrowdStrike executive apologized before Congress regarding the faulty software update. Adam Meyers, a senior vice president, admitted that a content configuration update for their Falcon Sensor security software caused worldwide system crashes, stating, "We are deeply sorry this happened and we are determined to prevent this from happening again."