Delta declines Microsoft's assistance during outage, sparking retaliation.

• Microsoft's lawyer stated that CEO Satya Nadella sent an email to Delta CEO Ed Bastian but did not receive a response.
• Last week, CEO Bastian announced that the airline would seek damages after suffering a loss of $500 million due to disruptions.
• Microsoft's lawyer stated that the failed crew-scheduling system was being maintained by other technology companies, including IBM.

On Tuesday, the software giant responded to the carrier's announcement that it would seek damages for thousands of flight cancellations caused by a massive IT outage.

Delta faced more difficulties than its competitors in recovering from the July 19 outage, resulting in the cancellation of over 5,000 flights. The outage, caused by a faulty software update from CrowdStrike, affected millions of computers running Microsoft Windows and cost the airline $500 million, as CEO Ed Bastian revealed on CNBC's "Squawk Box" last week.

The Atlanta-based airline, which is renowned for its punctuality and positions itself as a premium airline, has no choice but to pursue legal action against the two technology companies.

On Tuesday, Dechert partner Mark Cheffo, representing Microsoft, sent a letter to attorney David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner, who represents Delta and had previously sent letters on behalf of the airline to CrowdStrike and Microsoft.

Microsoft has allegedly breached contractual obligations and acted recklessly in relation to the Faulty Update, as stated in a letter from Boies to Hossein Nowbar on July 29.

Cheffo stated in his reply that Microsoft understands Delta and its clients' concerns regarding the CrowdStrike incident. However, he added that the letter and Delta's public statements were incomplete, false, misleading, and harmful to Microsoft's reputation.

Microsoft offered to help Delta for free, but Delta turned away Microsoft employees each day from July 19 to July 23, as stated in Cheffo's letter.

Cheffo wrote that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emailed Bastian, who has never replied.

On July 22, Cheffo reported that Microsoft had written a letter offering assistance to a Delta employee. The employee responded with "All good" and thanked Microsoft for their help.

In 2019, Delta canceled a total of 5,000 flights, but in this incident, they canceled even more.

Delta executives claimed that the outage overloaded their crew scheduling system, which pairs crews with flights. However, Cheffo stated that Delta does not depend on Windows or Microsoft's Azure cloud services.

In 2021, IBM and Delta announced a multi-year deal to implement a hybrid-cloud architecture using Red Hat's OpenShift software. In 2022, Amazon announced that Delta had chosen its digital commerce unit, Amazon Web Services, as its preferred cloud provider.

"Microsoft's help was likely refused by Delta because its crew-tracking and scheduling system, which runs on IBM's technology, was being serviced by IBM, not Microsoft's Windows or Azure."

Bastian said last week Delta had to manually reset 40,000 servers.

Microsoft has requested Delta to maintain records detailing the role of technologies from IBM, Amazon, and others in the airline's problems from July 19 to July 24, as stated by Cheffo. IBM and Amazon spokespeople did not respond immediately with comment.

He stated that Microsoft is still attempting to determine why some individuals were able to recover more quickly than Delta.

According to Cheffo, our initial assessment indicates that Delta has not updated its IT systems, which may not have benefited its customers or staff.

Delta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.