Microsoft claims Delta Airlines declined help in upgrading technology after outage

Microsoft's legal team on Tuesday fired back at a lawsuit brought by Delta Airlines, claiming that the company had rejected Microsoft's repeated offers to help them in the aftermath of a global outage last month. 

Delta was hit the hardest in the outage last month, which forced the company to cancel or delay thousands of flights. Delta CEO Ed Bastian said the outage also cost the company nearly half a billion dollars because it took them longer to recover.

Mark Cheffo, a Dechert partner representing Microsoft, told Delta's attorney in a letter that it was still trying to figure out how other airlines recovered faster than Delta, and accused the company of not updating its systems.

“Our preliminary review suggests that Delta, unlike its competitors, apparently has not modernized its IT infrastructure, either for the benefit of its customers or for its pilots and flight attendants,” Cheffo wrote in the letter, NBC News reported.

“It is rapidly becoming apparent that Delta likely refused Microsoft’s help because the IT system it was most having trouble restoring — its crew-tracking and scheduling system — was being serviced by other technology providers, such as IBM ... and not Microsoft Windows," he added.

Cheffo said that the company had offered to help Delta fix its system each day from July 19 to July 23,  but that Delta always declined the help. Cheffo also accused Bastian of making "incomplete, false, misleading, and damaging" comments about Microsoft.

Bastian claimed last week that he was left with "no choice" but to sue Microsoft and CrowdStrike over the disruption.

Delta responded that it has a "long track record" of investing in safe and reliable service for its customers and employees.

“Since 2016, Delta has invested billions of dollars in IT capital expenditures, in addition to the billions spent annually in IT operating costs,” the airline added, per NBC.

Delta has maintained that it did everything it could to help its customers, including spending five days helping customers book hotels, and compensating travelers on cancellation fees and rebooking them on different flights.

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.