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Delta Air Lines<\/a> Inc. expects $380 million in lost revenue this quarter from the CrowdStrike Holdings<\/a> Inc. technology outage that forced the carrier to cancel thousands of flights last month.<\/p>\n The sales hit is due primarily to customer refunds and compensation in the form of cash and loyalty miles, the airline said Thursday in a regulatory filing. Delta estimated $170 million in costs to reimburse passengers for expenses and spending related to crews.<\/p>\n Delta, which canceled about 7,000 flights over several days following the July 19 outage, previously said it expected about a $500 million impact<\/a> and had hired the law firm of prominent attorney David Boies to represent it. The airline on Thursday confirmed that it was pursuing legal claims against CrowdStrike and Microsoft<\/a> Corp. to recover damages.\u00a0<\/p>\n CrowdStrike\u2019s outage caused a \u201ccatastrophic shutdown\u201d of more than 8 million computers around the world, including 37,000 at Delta, Boies said in a letter Thursday to the technology company\u2019s attorney. The disruption affected more than 1.3 million customers of the airline, and about 60% of its \u201cmission critical\u201d applications, including backup systems, depend on the Microsoft<\/a> Windows operating system and CrowdStrike, he said.<\/p>\n The letter continues a back-and-forth among law firms for the three companies as they seek to assign responsibility for the mass disruption caused by the outage.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, CrowdStrike and Microsoft said Delta either\u00a0turned down<\/a>\u00a0or didn\u2019t respond to offers of assistance from the technology firms, including between the chief executives of the companies. CrowdStrike only referred Delta to a publicly available remediation website during the first 65 hours of the outage, Boies\u2019s letter said. He added that an automated solution it offered later introduced a second bug.<\/p>\n CrowdStrike on Thursday disputed Delta\u2019s timeline, saying in a statement that its chief executive contacted David DeWalt, a Delta director who serves on the board\u2019s safety and security committee, within four hours of the incident. The company also said that its chief security officer was in \u201cdirect contact\u201d with his Delta counterpart, providing technical support beyond what was on the website.\u00a0<\/p>\n DeWalt later\u00a0posted<\/a>\u00a0on LinkedIn<\/a> that CrowdStrike had done an \u201cincredible job,\u201d CrowdStrike pointed out. The Delta director didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment while the company declined to comment.<\/p>\n The tech company\u2019s attorneys have said \u201cany liability by CrowdStrike is contractually capped at an amount in the single-digit millions.\u201d Microsoft declined to comment.<\/p>\n Delta has said its extended recovery time stemmed from the outage\u2019s effects on an internal system used to process changes to flights and their crews. That left Delta unable to get its aircraft and personnel properly aligned.\u00a0<\/p>\n The US Department of Transportation has opened an investigation into Delta\u2019s handling of the breakdown and the airline could face a fine from the agency depending on its conclusions. Southwest Airlines<\/a> Co. was fined $140 million by DOT in 2023 after a meltdown of its operation in late December 2022 stranded more than 2 million passengers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nRecommended Newsletter: <\/strong>CEO Daily provides key context for the news leaders need to know from across the world of business. Every weekday morning, more than 125,000 readers trust CEO Daily for insights about\u2013and from inside\u2013the C-suite. Subscribe Now<\/a>.<\/div>\n