ROUGH AIR

Delta CEO: Company Suing Microsoft and CrowdStrike After $500M Loss

The tech glitch caused the airline to cancel over 5,000 flights and dole out millions in customer reimbursements.

Following a nationwide IT outage caused by a CrowdStrike software update gone awry, Delta Air Lines said the incident cost them $500 million. The company’s CEO, Ed Bastian, revealed the loss in a Wednesday interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box. In the conversation, Bastian confirmed that the issue that caused more than 5,000 flights to be canceled has been completely resolved, and in the last week, the airline has had “less than 100 cancelations” out of its 30,000 flights. In terms of money lost, Bastian said a large chunk of it came from “the tens of millions of dollars per day in compensation and hotels” the company had to pay customers. While other airlines seemed to bounce back fairly quickly, Delta lagged in its response which led to a U.S. Department of Transportation investigation. Moving forward, Bastian said that the company will look into suing Crowdstrike and Microsoft for the error. “We have no choice,” Bastian said.