In mid July 2024, Delta Air Lines, a major U.S. carrier and the largest airline in the world by revenue, assets, market capitalization experienced an operational disruption following the 2024 CrowdStrike incident including the cancelation of over 1,200 flights.
In the mid-morning of July 19, a ground stop was issued by the three major U.S. carriers, United, Delta, and American Airlines, halting takeoffs but allowing aircraft aloft to reach their destinations.
As a result, roughly 8.5 million systems crashed and were unable to properly restart[8] in what has been called the largest outage in the history of information technology[9] and "historic in scale".
[15] Metro Atlanta hotels and rental car companies were overwhelmed by the crisis, leaving travelers no option but to stay in the airport.
[21][23] Delta CIO Rahul Samant said the program had been brought back online around 11 a.m. on July 19, but was overwhelmed by the backlog of updates awaiting processing and had been trying to catch up ever since.
[22][24] Meanwhile, Rep. Rick Larsen, the ranking member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, released a statement alleging "families across the country are still stranded at airports due to last week’s global technology outage, and the slow response by some airlines to this meltdown has been unacceptable.
[38] In August 2024, passengers left stranded and refused refunds by Delta filed suit seeking class action status.
[39] The lawsuit alleged that "Delta’s failure to recover from the CrowdStrike outage left passengers stranded in airports across the country and the world and, in many cases, thousands of miles from home" with "disastrous" impact.
[39] On October 25, 2024, Delta Air Lines filed a lawsuit against cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, seeking compensation for losses incurred during a significant IT outage on July 19, 2024.
In response, CrowdStrike has acknowledged the faulty update but disputes the extent of its liability, attributing Delta's prolonged recovery to the airline's internal IT management.
[41] Analysts noted that melting down while peers returned to normal operations had damaged Delta's image as a reliable carrier.