Microsoft Disputes Delta Airline’s $500 Million Outage Claims

The Microsoft logo in Issy-les-Moulineaux, outside Paris, France, on April 12, 2016. (Michel Euler/AP)

Microsoft has denied claims by Delta Air Lines that the tech giant, along with cybersecurity software firm CrowdStrike, is to blame for the cancellation of thousands of flights last month during a worldwide IT outage.

Mark Cheffo, a lawyer for Microsoft, said in an Aug. 6 letter that while the company empathizes with Delta and its customers regarding the impact of the CrowdStrike incident, the airline’s public comments are “incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation.”

He further claimed that Delta’s key IT system is likely serviced by other technology companies, and not Microsoft.

Cheffo made the comments in a letter addressed to Delta attorney David Boies after Delta CEO Ed Bastian suggested CrowdStrike was to blame for the outage and the airline would sue over lost revenue.

In an interview with CNBC late last month, Bastian said the outage cost the airline $500 million.

Cheffo stated that while Microsoft’s software had “not caused the CrowdStrike incident,” the company “immediately jumped in and offered to assist Delta at no charge” following the July 19 outage.

“Each day that followed from July 19 through July 23, Microsoft employees repeated their offers to help Delta,” Cheffo said. “Each time, Delta turned down Microsoft’s offers to help, even though Microsoft would not have charged Delta for this assistance,” he continued.

Additionally, on the morning of July 22, a Microsoft employee who was aware of Delta encountering “more difficulty recovering” from the outage than “any other airline” reached out to a Delta employee to offer further assistance, Cheffo wrote in his letter to Boies.

Cheffo further said that multiple senior executives at Microsoft had also reached out to their counterparts at Delta to help.

Microsoft Still Probing Global Outage

However, it is becoming “rapidly apparent” that the Atlanta-based carrier likely refused help from Microsoft because the IT system it was having issues restoring “was being serviced by other technology providers, such as IBM, because it runs on those providers’ systems, and not Microsoft Windows or Azure,” Cheffo said.

Microsoft is continuing to probe the circumstances surrounding the CrowdStrike incident, Cheffo said.

A preliminary review suggests that Delta, unlike its competitors including American Airlines and United Airlines, “had not modernized its IT infrastructure,” the lawyer said.

“Given Delta’s false and damaging public statements, Microsoft will vigorously defend itself in any litigation if Delta chooses to pursue that path,” Cheffo concluded.

In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a Delta spokesperson said the airline “has a long track record of investing in safe, reliable and elevated service for our customers and employees.”

“Since 2016, Delta has invested billions of dollars in IT capital expenditures, in addition to the billions spent annually in IT operating costs.”

Cheffo’s letter comes a day after CrowdStrike Attorney Michael Carlinsky issued similar comments in a letter to the airline, and said the cybersecurity firm has offered onsite assistance to Delta during the outage.

Austin-based CrowdStrike has acknowledged that a faulty software update sparked the worldwide IT outage last month, causing global chaos and disrupting flights, banks, hospitals, retail, and media.

The software update for Windows was in a security system called Falcon, which CrowdStrike produces. The incident caused more than 1 billion Windows-based computers to crash across the globe and caused thousands of flights to be canceled.

The Epoch Times has contacted a spokesperson for Delta Air Lines for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.