Delta put some figures on its plans to recover at least $500 million in damages from CrowdStrike and Microsoft.
In an SEC filing, Delta broke down the outage impact this way:
- $380 million direct revenue impact due to refunds and customer compensation with SkyMiles or cash.
- $170 million in non-fuel expenses due to operational recovery, which includes customer expense reimbursement and crew costs.
- $50 million in gains from lower fuel expenses due to 7,000 flight cancellations.
Add it up and you get to Delta's $500 million figure.
CrowdStrike and Microsoft have volleyed letters with Delta and the core points against Delta were:
- Both vendors offered to help Delta, but didn't get responses.
- Delta's creaky infrastructure and IT practices shouldn't be put on vendors.
- Delta has to explain why it couldn't recover when competitors restored operations faster.
What's next? More volleying between a customer and two vendors and a handful of lawsuits. The discovery process on Delta's technical architecture is going to be fascinating to watch and fodder for IT management case studies in the future.
