Microsoft is pushing back on Delta after the airline repeatedly blamed cybersecurity company CrowdStrike for its meltdown following the global software outage last month, suggesting the airline's own, outdated technology is likely to blame.
The Atlanta-based airline canceled more than 5,500 flights over a five-day span in late July – more than its cancellations in all of 2018 and 2019, according to federal data. While American Airlines and United were also affected by CrowdStrike's July 19 outage, Delta canceled more than twice as many flights as those two carriers combined over the following week.
Yet Delta has continually blamed CrowdStrike and Crowdstrike alone for its collapse. Delta has even said it's preparing to sue CrowdStrike, aiming to force the cybersecurity company to cover the $500 million financial hit from its meltdown.
Microsoft – the IT giant whose systems were brought down by CrowdStrike's faulty update – says that's just not true.
In a letter delivered to Delta on Tuesday, a lawyer representing Microsoft accused Delta of painting a “false picture” of the situation. And Microsoft says it repeatedly offered additional assistance to Delta – including an email from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella straight to Delta CEO Ed Bastian sent on Wednesday, July 24.
That email went unanswered, Microsoft's attorney said. Bastian departed for Paris to attend the Summer Olympics the day before on July 23 – a day Delta was still canceling hundreds of flights.
Read more: How Delta (Repeatedly) Bungled its Worst Meltdown Ever
While Microsoft said it's still investigating, its preliminary review of the global IT outage “suggests that Delta, unlike its competitors, apparently has not modernized its IT infrastructure, either for the benefit of its customers or for its pilots and flight attendants.”
“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,” the letter says.
While Delta has publicly laid the blame at CrowdStrike's feet, it has acknowledged internally that there were other problems. In videos shared with Delta employees, executives admitted that its crew tracking platform simply broke down – and it continued to falter every time they tried to restart it, triggering more cancellations that would, in turn, make matters worse.
In a statement to Thrifty Traveler on Tuesday, Delta did not directly address Microsoft’s assertion that the airline has failed to invest in updating its technology – nor did it address Microsoft's suggestion that the critical crew scheduling system that failed during its meltdown wasn’t actually affected by the initial outage.
“Delta 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,” the statement read.
The back and forth comes as Delta ramps up pressure on CrowdStrike to foot the bill for its historic meltdown.
“We have no choice,” Bastian said in an interview with CNBC from Paris last week – his first and only public remarks to date on the subject. “We have to protect our shareholders, we have to protect our customers, our employees for the damage – not just for the costs, but the brand, the reputational damage.”
While Bastian claimed Delta is more reliant on Microsoft and CrowdStrike-supported systems, he did not explicitly say whether its troubled crew tracking platform was brought down by the initial outage.
Earlier this week, an attorney for CrowdStrike fired back at Delta, countering Bastian's claim that it offered no additional help and saying the airline “contributed to a misleading narrative that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta’s IT decisions and response to the outage.”
“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,” CrowdStrike's letter read.
Much like Microsoft, the attorney said CrowdStrike's CEO also reached out to Bastian directly. He also never got a response, according to the letter.