Last year’s CrowdStrike Outage continues to haunt Delta Air Lines, as it stares at a class action lawsuit from some passengers affected by the incident. A US District judge has ruled that the airline could be held accountable for breach of contract due to its inability to provide refunds.
The outage made global headlines in 2024, and while it affected airlines and airports across the globe, it was particularly heavy on Delta, which took a lot longer than other carriers to recover from the incident.
Class Action Lawsuit
A US judge has ruled that 
Delta Air Lines
must face a lawsuit from passengers who did not get refunds following last year’s global CrowdStrike outage. According to a report by ReutersUS District Judge Mark Cohen in Atlanta said that five out of nine plaintiffs are now allowed to sue the airline because it breached its contract after failing to issue a refund. The ruling is based on the Montreal Convention, a multilateral treaty that allows passengers to claim refunds in the event of a delayed or canceled flight.
The report cites examples of passengers facing significant loss of time and money and a disruption of their travel plans because of Delta flight cancelations. One of them is John Brennan of Florida, who, along with his wife, missed a $10,000 anniversary cruise because they were stuck in Atlanta following operational disruptions. They say that the carrier paid them just $219.45 in compensation.
Reuters said that another plaintiff from the Netherlands, Vittorio Muzzi, spent 5,000 euros ($5,685), and had his luggage delayed for 15 days after his flight to Florida from Amsterdam was canceled. He received 588 euros ($669) in compensation from Delta.
Joseph Sauder, a lawyer for some of the plaintiffs, told Reuters,
“This ruling is a major step forward for Delta passengers seeking accountability.”
Delta Affected More Than Other Carriers
The CrowdStrike outage disrupted the operations of many airlines, airports and even other sectors all over the world. However, Delta faced more severe consequences than other carriers. Other airlines were able to contain the losses and disruption within days, but for Delta, it lasted a lot longer.
It was reported that Delta had to cancel around 7,000 flights over many days due to the outage. The airline was under investigation by the US Department of Transportation (DOT) following the outage after it became clear that its operations were hit severely, affecting thousands of passengers. It also affected Delta’s overall performance in that quarter, and the airline lost around $500 million due to the outage and its aftermath.
As Delta faced lawsuits from many of its passengers who suffered from the loss of time and money, the airline itself sued CrowdStrike, saying that the company “forced untested and faulty updates to its customers, causing more than 8.5 million Microsoft Windows-based computers around the world to crash.” CrowdStrike sued back to clarify that it did not cause harm to the airline in the way it was projecting and that its attempt to help the airline was met with refusal.
Related
Outages Impact Operations Significantly
While the outage in July 2024 was certainly a big one, there have been other, more localized incidents that have affected airline and airport operations in the past, highlighting just how vulnerable the sector is to such events. On May 29, 2024, an IT-related issue due to inclement weather in Texas forced Southwest Airlines to delay over 1,400 flights and cancel 40 flights. This was after the problem was resolved quickly.
In 2023,
Hong Kong International Airport faced a significant system outage
forcing long queues as ground staff struggled with check-in due to a computer system breakdown. Flag carrier Cathay Pacific was most affected, with at least 50 of its flights delayed.
In February 2024, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) reported a 50-minute power outage that affected all nine of the airport’s terminals. This shows that any kind of system glitch has the potential to bringing operations at large airports to a standstill.
