Microsoft Blames Delta for Service Struggles After Outage
A software update last month by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered system problems for Microsoft customers around the world, including many airlines.
But while disruptions were quickly resolved within 24 hours for most airlines, they continued for days at Delta Air Lines with about 6,000 canceled flights.
Delta put the full blame of Microsoft. The airline’s CEO Ed Bastian even said last week that it would seek compensation from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft for the estimated $500 million its company lost due to the outage.
Now, Microsoft says that it offered to help Delta refused its free help on several occasions. David Slotnick shared the letter of Microsoft’s attorney Mark Cheffo, sent to his Delta’s counterparts.
New: Microsoft says Delta declined multiple offers of help during last month’s meltdown; accuses Delta of pushing narrative that’s “incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation.”
Letter from Microsoft’s attorney: pic.twitter.com/6dVROZgKUc
— David Slotnick (@David_Slotnick) August 6, 2024
“Microsoft empathizes with Delta and its customers regarding the impact of the CrowdStrike incident. But your letter and Delta’s public comments are incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation,” the letter says.
“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,” Cheffo says. “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.”
The letter hints at the possibility that Delta refused Microsoft’s help because it was actually struggling to restore non-Windows systems instead.
Microsoft is asking Delta to preserve documents related to the CrowdStrike outage, as well as anything related to the outage of its crew scheduling systems that run on a mixture of IBM, Oracle, Amazon Web Services, and other technologies.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is the old king of travel rewards cards. Right now
bonus_miles_full
Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
The biggest and most time consuming hurdle of this issue was to touch each machine to fix it. Did MS actually offer up physical labor? I have doubts and if so, there is a privacy & security aspect to having someone outside of Delta having access to systems.
Doing IT the right way isn’t easy. I hope they can all get it figured out.