The drama is heating up between CrowdStrike and Delta Airlines in between a possible lawsuit against the tech company after July mass disruption which allegedly led to canceling thousands of Delta flights.
On Sunday, CrowdStrike attorney Michael Carlinsky said wrote to him Delta Airlines attorney David Boies said Delta's threats of a lawsuit “contributed to a misleading narrative that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta's IT decisions and outage response.”
The letter claimed that CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz contacted Delta CEO Ed Bastian in the middle of the disaster to “offer on-site assistance but received no response,” according to CNBC.
Connected: Read the memo from CrowdStrike explaining the massive IT disruption
Carlinsky also said that if Delta proceeds with the lawsuit, the airline will have to “explain to the public, its shareholders and ultimately a jury why CrowdStrike took responsibility for its actions — quickly, transparently and constructively — while Delta did not.” “
Last week, Bastian spoke to Squawk Box and said the airline had “no choice” but to seek compensation following the incident.
“We have to protect our shareholders,” Bastian said on the show. “We have to protect our customers, our employees, for the damage, not just for the cost of it, but for the brand, the reputational damage.”
The CrowdStrike update caused widespread disruptions to Microsoft-run devices and internal problems at Delta, affecting one of the airline's main crew tracking tools.
Delta is said to have been lost between $350 and $500 million during the outages and canceled approximately 7,000 flights.
Connected: Delta hires celebrity lawyer, seeks compensation from CrowdStrike
Delta has not disclosed how much it would seek in compensation from CrowdStrike, and the lawsuit has not yet been formally filed. However, Bastian told the employees via an internal memo last Friday that the airline was “planning to pursue legal claims” against the technology company.
Delta Airlines was down up 15.5% year over year as of Tuesday afternoon.