Delta dis(Continuity)

Thanks to CrowdStrike, a little help from Microsoft, and maybe even some assistance from the European Union, Delta Airlines recently suffered an embarrassing systems outage, leading to thousands of flight cancellations and an estimated cost of over $500 million.

In the early morning of 19 July 2024 (US time), IT personnel across the country were awakened by emergency notifications of system outages. CrowdStrike’s poorly planned Rapid Response Content update was crashing millions of Windows machines. Airlines were an immediate and very visible casualty with over 4,000 flights canceled that day and thousands delayed.

Notably, Delta accounted for over a quarter of all flight cancellations that auspicious Friday. While other airlines resumed operations, Delta struggled, ultimately canceling over 7,000 flights and paying $380 million in refunds and compensation to affected passengers.

Delta is placing the onus on Crowdstrike and Microsoft and hired attorney David Boies just 10 days after the incident. Crowdstrike and Microsoft are criticizing Delta for refusing their assistance and not updating antiquated systems.

Delta’s narrative of blame seems exaggerated since other airlines and major organizations were back to business as usual within hours while Delta continued to stumble for days. There may be truth to Microsoft’s assertion that Delta’s infrastructure is outdated, but the underlying cause is deeper and more problematic. Business continuity planning and recovery exercises are regular practices employed by every major organization. Business continuity exercises are meant to uncover operational weak points and ensure swift recovery from unplanned outages.

Delta has had trouble recovering from system failures before. In August 2016, their operations center experienced a power issue. According to Delta COO Gil West, “critical systems and network equipment didn’t switch over to backups,” resulting in thousands of cancellations and delays and a $150 million charge. Disappointingly, Delta initially blamed Georgia Power for the outage when it was Delta’s own equipment that caused the failure.