On October 25, Delta Air Lines filed a lawsuit against CrowdStrike in a Fulton County Superior Court in Georgia, alleging that a software update from the cybersecurity company led to a major system outage in July. This incident forced Delta to cancel a significant number of flights, affecting approximately 1.3 million passengers and resulting in losses exceeding $500 million.

According to Reuters, Delta claims in its lawsuit that the erroneous software update was a “catastrophic” event, accusing CrowdStrike of compelling customers to install untested updates that caused over 8.5 million computers running Microsoft Windows worldwide to crash.

The incident, which occurred on July 19, not only led to widespread flight cancellations but also disrupted various sectors, including banking, healthcare, media, and hospitality.

Later on October 25, CrowdStrike responded, stating, “Delta Air Lines’ claims are based on proven false information, reflecting a lack of understanding of modern cybersecurity operations. Delta has failed to modernize its outdated IT infrastructure and is using this desperate attempt to deflect blame for its slow recovery.”

Delta stated that it has been purchasing CrowdStrike’s products since 2022 and claims that the outage resulted in the cancellation of 7,000 flights, impacting 1.3 million passengers within just five days.

The airline asserts that CrowdStrike should be held responsible for over $500 million in incurred expenses, including unspecified profit losses, legal fees, reputational damage, and future revenue losses.

Delta further contends that if CrowdStrike had tested the software update on just one computer before deployment, it would have anticipated the potential for a system crash. “The inability to remotely remove the problematic update significantly hampered Delta’s operations and caused substantial delays for our customers,” the airline noted.