The airline was forced to cancel 7,000 flights and lost about $500 million when its computers crashed.
A Delta Boeing 767-400 aircraft. (Photo: Shutterstock | Nadezda Murmakova)
Delta can sue the cybersecurity technology company behind a massive computer outage that crippled the airline’s operations and forced the cancellation of 7,000 flights, a judge in Georgia has ruled.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kelly Lee Ellerbe said Atlanta-based Delta can move forward with a lawsuit against CrowdStrike for “gross negligence” in connection with a faulty update of its software to customers, which crashed over eight million Microsoft Windows-based computers worldwide on July 19, 2024.
The outage affected several airlines, but Delta was the worst hit, with its major hubs kept at a standstill for hours. Disruptions to its operations continued for five days.
Delta sued CrowdStrike in October, claiming “over $500 million in out-of-pocket losses.” CrowdStrike filed a motion to have the lawsuit thrown out, arguing potential damages are capped by a contract between the two companies and by Georgia state law, but Ellerbe allowed the majority of Delta’s claims to proceed.
“Delta has specifically pled that if CrowdStrike had tested the July update on one computer before its deployment, the programming error would have been detected,” the judge’s ruling stated. “As CrowdStrike has acknowledged, its own president publicly stated CrowdStrike did something ‘horribly wrong’ with the July update. Construed under the indulgent standards applicable to a motion to dismiss, these allegations are sufficient to state a claim for gross negligence.”
Ellerbe is also permitting Delta to pursue a computer trespass claim over the airline’s allegation that CrowdStrike installed an unauthorized backdoor into the company’s computers and forced through the defective update. She did dismiss some of Delta’s points relating to intentional misrepresentation and fraud by omission, writing that they did not satisfy legal standards.
Delta told Reuters that it is pleased with the ruling and confident in the merits of its case as it moves forward.
CrowdStrike maintains that Delta refused help while dealing with the outage and had flawed information technology systems in place that only made it worse. A letter sent by CrowdStrike’s attorneys to Delta in August before the lawsuit was filed faulted the airline for its lack of operational resilience and planning.
“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,” the letter read.
A lawyer representing CrowdStrike told ITPro this week that the company is pleased with the court’s decision to throw out some of Delta’s claims and is confident the remaining claims will be capped in the “single-digit-millions of dollars or otherwise found to be without merit.”
A federal judge ruled earlier this month that Delta itself must face a lawsuit from passengers who said the airline refused to offer full refunds for delayed and canceled flights stemming from the CrowdStrike outage.
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