Drama is heating up between CrowdStrike and Delta Airlines amid a potential lawsuit against the tech company following a mass outage in July that reportedly led to the cancellation of thousands of Delta flights.
CrowdStrike attorney Michael Carlinsky reportedly wrote to Delta Airlines attorney David Boies on Sunday that Delta’s threats to sue “contributed to the misleading claim that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta’s IT decisions and response to the outage.”
The letter claimed that CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz reached out to Delta CEO Ed Bastian in the midst of the disaster to “offer on-site assistance but received no response,” according to CNBC.
Related: Read CrowdStrike’s Memo Explaining Massive IT Outage
Carlinsky also said that if Delta were to proceed with the lawsuit, the airline would have to “explain to the public, to its shareholders and ultimately to a jury why CrowdStrike took responsibility for its actions — promptly, transparently and constructively — while Delta did not.” “
Speaking to “Squawk Box” last week, Bastian said the airline “had no choice” but to seek damages following the incident.
“We have to protect our shareholders,” Bastian said on the show. “We have to protect our customers, our employees, from harm, not only because of costs, but also because of brand and reputational harm.”
The CrowdStrike update caused widespread outages for Microsoft-operated devices and internal problems at Delta, affecting one of the airline’s best crew tracking tools.
Delta reportedly lost between $350 million and $500 million during the outages and canceled about 7,000 flights.
Related: Delta Hires Celebrity Lawyer, Seeks CrowdStrike Compensation
Delta has not disclosed how much it is seeking in damages from CrowdStrike, and the lawsuit has not yet been officially filed. Still, Bastian told employees in an internal memo last Friday that the airline “plans to pursue legal claims” against the technology company.
Delta Airlines was down more than 15.5% year-to-date on Tuesday afternoon.