In a response letter to CrowdStrike attorney Michael Carlinsky, Delta attorney David Boies states that the software company has no basis to suggest the airline was responsible for the faulty software that crashed systems around the world.

“When the disaster occurred, dedicated Delta employees across the company worked tirelessly to recover from the damage CrowdStrike had caused,” Boies states in the letter. “Their efforts were hindered by CrowdStrike’s failure to promptly provide an automatic solution or the information needed to facilitate those efforts.”

• READ MORE: GA, Private Aviation Dodge Worst of Cyber Outage Impact

Among several points addressed by Boies in his letter, he notably asserts that CrowdStrike showed no sense of urgency for the damage it caused, and the cybersecurity company’s offers to assist Delta were too late. Boies states that CrowdStrike’s offers of assistance during the first 65 hours of the outage simply referred Delta to CrowdStrike’s publicly available remediation website, which instructed Delta to manually reboot every affected machine.

“While CrowdStrike eventually offered a supposed automated solution on Sunday, July 21 at 5:27 pm ET, it introduced a second bug that prevented many machines from recovering without additional intervention,” Boies states.

As for CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz’s offer to support Delta CEO Ed Bastian, Boies said that Kurtz offered this assistance on the evening of July 22, and it was unhelpful and untimely.

“When made—almost four days after the CrowdStrike disaster began—Delta had already restored its critical systems and most other machines,” Boies said. “Many of the remaining machines were located in secure airport areas requiring government-mandated access clearance. By that time Delta’s confidence in CrowdStrike was naturally shaken.”

• READ MORE: CrowdStrike Disputes Negligence Claims in Letter to Delta Attorney

Additionally, Boies addressed claims that Delta’s IT technology was not up to par for handling the disaster.

“Delta rejects CrowdStrike’s misplaced attempt to shift responsibility for its failures to Delta’s ‘IT decisions and response to the outage,’” Boies states. “First, those ‘decisions and response’ had nothing to do with the cause of the outage. Moreover, for the last several years, including prior to and following its recovery from the Faulty Update, Delta’s operational reliability and customer service has led the airline industry. Delta has achieved its industry-leading reliability and service due, in part, to investing billions of dollars in information technology.”

Boies ends the letter demanding CrowdStrike “accept real responsibility for its actions” and compensate the airline for damaging its business, reputation, and goodwill.

Delta Details Financial Impact

The letter comes after Delta detailed its previously reported $500M loss in revenue due to IT outages in an 8-K form published on Thursday.

The report states that the incident caused around 7,000 flight cancellations over the course of five days, leading to $380 million in customer refunds, $170 million in expense reimbursements and crew-related costs, and $50 million in estimated fuel expenses. This has impacted the airline’s projected year-over-year September quarter 2024 capacity growth by approximately 1.5 points.

“An operational disruption of this length and magnitude is unacceptable, and our customers and employees deserve better. Since the incident, our people have returned the operation to an industry-leading position that is consistent with the level of performance our customers expect from Delta,” said Bastian in a statement included in the 8-K form.

Bastian doubled down on previous litigation threats, stating in the form that Delta is pursuing legal claims against CrowdStrike and Microsoft to recover at least $500 million in damages caused by the outage.

Both CrowdStrike and Microsoft have denied Delta’s allegations of negligence for the software update that caused airline disruptions nationwide on July 19. Both companies also claimed that Delta had refused free assistance from their IT teams to help with the airline’s ongoing issues throughout the week of the outage.

Class Action Lawsuit

The U.S. Department of Transportation warned airlines were legally obligated to provide passengers cash refunds shortly after July’s IT outages. Law firms Sauder Schelkopf and Webb, Klase & Lemond filed a class action lawsuit this week on behalf of Delta passengers whose flights were canceled due to the outages.

The complaint alleges that nearly every airline had managed to recover and resume normal operations by the end of the week, except for Delta, which continued to cancel flights.

“On Monday, July 22, it was reported that Delta canceled more than 1,250 flights. These cancellations accounted for nearly 70 percent of all flights within, to, or from the United States that had been canceled on Monday,” Sauder Schelkopf’s website states. “No other U.S. airline had canceled one-tenth as many flights.”

Additionally, the class action lawsuit alleges that Delta failed to give some affected passengers automatic refunds for canceled flights and oftentimes conditioned its offer of partial reimbursements to passengers on a waiver releasing Delta of all legal claims passengers have against Delta.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AirlineGeeks.com.

The post Delta, CrowdStrike Spar Over July Meltdown appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In an August 6 letter to Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) president Jason Ambrosi urged the manufacturer to reconsider its proposal to reduce cockpit crew from two to one from entering the commercial aviation environment.

• READ MORE: Airbus, Avincis to Explore Europewide Electric Air Taxi Operations

Ambrosi cited the recent CrowdStrike cybersecurity incident as an example of the risks associated with an overreliance on technology. Ambrosi stated that technology should complement human expertise and monitored airline operations rather than replace it.

“Technological advancements can and have enhanced aviation safety, but in order to maintain and enhance our current level of safety, technology alone will never replace the indispensable role of two pilots in the flight deck,” Ambrosi said in the letter.

In addition to ALPA, the letter garnered support signatures from leaders of the European Cockpit Association and the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations, which represent tens of thousands of pilots around the world.

This article first appeared on AVweb.com.

The post Associations Urge Airbus to Reconsider Single-Pilot Cockpit Proposal appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Microsoft attorney Mark Cheffo said on Tuesday that Delta’s public comments are incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging to the tech giant and its reputation in a written response to the airline posted on X by aviation reporter David Slotnick.

This comes a day after CrowdStrike attorney Michael Carlinsky told Delta it was misleading to say CrowdStrike was responsible for the airline’s IT decisions after nationwide outages in mid-July. A letter to Delta by Carlinsky stated CrowdStrike, a global cybersecurity provider, has worked diligently to address the outages, as well as offered onsite assistance to Delta—which Carlinsky says the airline refused.

• READ MORE: CrowdStrike Disputes Negligence Claims in Letter to Delta Attorney

In Cheffo’s written response to the airline on behalf of Microsoft, Cheffo states that while the tech company’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 in the letter to the airline’s attorney, David Boies. “Each time, Delta turned down Microsoft’s offers to help, even though Microsoft would not have charged Delta for this assistance.”

Additionally, Cheffo states that on the morning of July 22, a Microsoft employee who was aware of Delta’s difficulties recovering from the outage reached out to a Delta employee to offer further assistance.

“The Delta employee replied, saying, ‘All good. Cool will let you know and thank you,’” Cheffo said. “Despite this assessment that things were ‘all good,’ public reports indicate that Delta canceled more than 1,100 flights on July 22 and more than 500 flights on July 23.”

Cheffo said that more senior Microsoft executives also repeatedly reached out to help counterparts at Delta, again with similar results. On July 24, Cheffo said that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emailed Delta CEO Ed Bastian, who has never replied.

• READ MORE: IT Outage Cost Delta Air Lines $500 Million

“In fact, 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,” Cheffo said.

Microsoft’s attorney echoed CrowdStrike’s list of demands to preserve all relevant documents, records, and communications of any kind in the possession of the airline.

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

This article first appeared on AirlineGeeks.com.

The post Microsoft Also Claims That Delta Denied Assistance During July Outage appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

According to a letter posted on X by aviation reporter David Slotnick on Sunday, CrowdStrike attorney Michael Carlinsky told Delta attorney David Boies that it was misleading to say CrowdStrike was responsible for Delta’s IT decisions in response to the outage. Boies was reportedly retained by Delta to seek damages from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft after airline CEO Ed Bastian said the outages cost the company $500 million.

“CrowdStrike reiterates its apology to Delta, its employees, and its customers, and is empathetic to the circumstances they faced,” the letter from Carlinsky states. “However, CrowdStrike is highly disappointed by Delta’s suggestion that CrowdStrike acted inappropriately and strongly rejects any allegation that it was grossly negligent or committed willful misconduct with respect to the Channel File 291 incident. Your suggestion that CrowdStrike failed to do testing and validation is contradicted by the very information on which you rely from CrowdStrike’s Preliminary Post Incident Review.”

The letter states that CrowdStrike has worked tirelessly to help its customers restore impacted systems and resume services to their customers. Carlinsky states in the letter that within hours of the incident, CrowdStrike reached out to Delta to offer help and make sure the airline was aware of an available fix.

• READ MORE: IT Outage Cost Delta Air Lines $500 Million

Additionally, Carlinsky says that CrowdStrike’s CEO personally reached out to Delta’s CEO to offer on-site assistance but received no response. After following up on the offer for on-site support, Carlinsky said Delta declined the offer for help.

“Delta’s public threat of litigation distracts from this work and has contributed to a misleading narrative that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta’s IT decisions and response to the outage,” the letter continues. “Should Delta pursue this path, Delta will have to explain to the public, its shareholders, and ultimately a jury why CrowdStrike took responsibility for its actions— swiftly, transparently, and constructively-while Delta did not.”

Carlinsky argues in the letter that Delta will have to explain why its competitors facing similar challenges all restored normal operations faster and why the airline turned down free on-site help from CrowdStrike. He also states that any liability by CrowdStrike is contractually capped in the single-digit millions.

• READ MORE: GA, Private Aviation Dodge Worst of Cyber Outage Impact

Carlinsky stated that CrowdStrike demands Delta preserve all documents, records, and communications of any kind in the possession of the airline, including:

1. Delta’s response to the Channel File 291 incident.
2. Delta’s emergency backup, disaster recovery, and IT business continuity plans, and any related testing of those plans.
3. All assessments of Delta’s IT infrastructure, including any gaps and remediation recommendations, for the last five years, including in the wake of the Channel File 291 incident.
4. All decisions to upgrade or not upgrade Delta’s IT infrastructure in the last five years.
5. All scripts and software that Delta has deployed before and after the Channel File 291 incident to address possible Windows group policy corruption issues across the IT estate.
6. All system event logs for the weeks preceding and succeeding the Channel File 291 incident.
7. All encryption-level software that Delta deployed on all its IT infrastructure and the management of this software.
8. All technology and operating systems that Delta utilizes to assign workflow, routes, crews, flight schedules, etc. and any information, documents, or analysis on how that technology interacts with any software that Delta employs on its IT infrastructure.
9. Any data loss following the Channel File 291 incident related to Delta’s workflow routes, crew and flight schedules, and all communications with crew members following the Channel File 291 incident.
10. Delta’s response and recovery to any previous IT outages in the past five years.

“As I am sure you can appreciate, while litigation would be unfortunate, CrowdStrike will respond aggressively, if forced to do so, in order to protect its shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders,” the letter states.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AirlineGeeks.com.

The post CrowdStrike Disputes Negligence Claims in Letter to Delta Attorney appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In the U.S., carriers have canceled 1,017 flights, or 4.2 percent of their planned schedule, so far. American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines say they have resumed some flights while Southwest Airlines has remained largely unaffected by the outage.

Other non-U.S.-based carriers, including Air France, KLM, and Singapore Airlines, also reported IT troubles on Friday.

The FAA said it is “closely monitoring” the issue in a statement.

“Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops for their fleets until the issue is resolved,” the agency added. “For more information, monitor fly.faa.gov for updates.”

U.S. carriers were scheduled to operate 27,000 flights on Friday, carrying up to 3.7 million passengers.

What’s Happening?

Airlines around the world are experiencing major IT issues, leading to widespread flight disruptions. The problems reportedly stem from a software update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike that has caused computers running Microsoft Windows to crash.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz announced on social media that the issue had been identified and isolated, and engineers had deployed a fix. However, the outage has already impacted airlines, airports, banks, media companies, and other institutions globally.

The situation is still developing, and it remains to be seen how quickly the fix will resolve the issues.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AirlineGeeks.com.

The post Global IT Outage Spurs Cancellations of Thousands of Flights appeared first on FLYING Magazine.