Microsoft Says Delta Was Largely Responsible for Flight Cancellations

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In mid-July, a cybersecurity company, CrowdStrike, issued a flawed software update to customers who run Microsoft Windows, effectively shutting down various computer systems of lots of businesses, including several airlines. Most carriers bounced back relatively quickly, but Delta struggled for days, ultimately canceling about 5,000 flights over four days, or more than a third of its schedule. Delta’s chief executive, Ed Bastian, has said the episode had cost the airline about $500 million. Last week, he told employees that he had hired Mr. Boies’s firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, to pursue legal claims against Microsoft and CrowdStrike, which also rebutted Delta’s claims this week. In its letter on Tuesday, Mr. Cheffo said that Microsoft “empathizes” with Delta and its customers and that while the technology company was not at fault, it had offered to help the airline for no charge after the outage. Microsoft repeated that offer over five days, from July 19 to July 23, but was turned down each time, it said. The technology company’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, also reached out to Mr. Bastian on July 24 but never received a response, according to the letter. (In its letter, CrowdStrike said Delta had rejected or ignored its offers for help, too.) Microsoft said Delta had probably turned it down because the airline was struggling the most with a computer system that it uses to track and schedule the airline’s crew and that was being serviced by other companies, including IBM. It also accused Delta of using outdated information technology.