By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -CrowdStrike on Sunday rejected a claim by Delta Air Lines (NYSE:) that it should be held responsible for flight disruptions after a global outage on July 19 caused by a faulty update, suggesting it had minimal potential liability.
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 company.
CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:) reiterated its apology to the airline, but said in a letter from outside counsel that it is “deeply disappointed by Delta’s suggestion that CrowdStrike acted inappropriately and strongly rejects any allegation that there was gross negligence or misconduct .”
Delta canceled more than 6,000 flights in a six-day period, impacting more than 500,000 passengers. It is facing a U.S. Transportation Department investigation into why it took so much longer to recover from the disruption than other airlines.
CrowdStrike’s letter stated that “any liability of CrowdStrike is contractually limited to an amount in the millions.”
Delta declined to comment on the CrowdStrike letter.
Within hours of the outage incident, CrowdStrike contacted Delta to provide assistance.
“In addition, CrowdStrike’s CEO personally contacted Delta’s CEO to provide on-site assistance but received no response,” the letter said.
Bastian told CNBC last week that CrowdStrike had offered “free consulting advice to help us.”
Delta told U.S. lawmakers in a letter seen by Reuters last week that CrowdStrike’s faulty update had “affected more than half of Delta’s computers, including many of Delta’s workstations at every airport in the Delta network.”
The letter added that Delta’s “complex IT system that distributes and synchronizes all of our data, including the data that powers our crew tracking and gate software, required manual recovery.”
The CrowdStrike letter added that if Delta files a lawsuit, it will have to answer “why Delta’s competitors, facing similar challenges, restored all operations much more quickly” and “why Delta denied the free on-site assistance from CrowdStrike professionals which has helped many other customers recover operations much faster than Delta.”
A CrowdStrike spokesperson said that “a public stance on potentially filing a futile lawsuit against CrowdStrike as a long-term partner is not constructive for any party. We hope that Delta agrees to work together to reach a resolution.”
