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Aug. 7 (UPI) -- Some passengers of Delta Air Lines who were affected by last month's national CrowdStrike IT outage, which resulted in more than 5,000 canceled flights, have filed a lawsuit against the Georgia-based air carrier. The federal class action lawsuit filed in Georgia's Northern District names, among others, plaintiffs including a Colorado man who got stranded in Amsterdam and a Florida man stuck in Atlanta on his way across the country to Seattle.
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"The impact on Delta passengers was disastrous," the lawsuit said. "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."
The lawsuit contends Delta had allegedly refused to initially give some automatic refunds to travelers for canceled flights, or would only offer a partial refund but only after passengers signed a waiver that released the airline from legal liability
It also alleges in the lawsuit Delta Air Lines refused to provide meal, hotel and ground transpiration vouchers, leaving stranded passengers "forced to spend thousands of dollars in unexpected expenses."
Delta's problems continued through July 25 following the July 19 outage, forcing the carrier to cancel its more than 5,000 flights. The incident cost Delta Air Lines about $500 million, CEO Ed Bastian said last week.
Several of the hundreds of travelers stranded the day the IT outage struck at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and who stayed there for days have joined the lawsuit, too.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Delta have reported being forced to travel by Greyhound bus because car rentals and hotels near Delta's headquarters in Atlanta were completely booked, while another plaintiff reported missinga a $10,000 anniversary cruise due to canceled flights.
The U.S. Department of Transportation stated previously that it would investigate Delta's prolonged flight troubles to ensure it was "following the law and taking care of its passengers."
According to the suit, the Colorado plaintiff, flying between Europe and the United States, ended up having to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket due to the problem. Delta reportedly originally told him that the refunds would be automatic but 10 days later Delta come back to say the passenger would have to submit a refund request, the lawsuit says.
"On July 31, 2024, plaintiff submitted two refund requests: one for the original canceled flight and one for his out of pocket expenses. In response, Delta offered Plaintiff a $100 voucher to use towards a future flight with Delta," according to the lawsuit. The out-of-pocket expenses reportedly totaled nearly $2,000.
Of the airlines affected by the outage, such as American and United, Delta by far was hit the hardest with canceled flights for days after the other airlines returned to normalcy.
In reply to Delta's own recent lawsuit against the two companies, CrowdStrike says it was not at fault for Delta's long-term tech issues, while tech giant Microsoft also pushed back on Delta, claiming that a lot of the blame should be on what it considered Delta's older tech infrastructure in a reply to Delta attorney's that echoed CrowdStrike's.
CrowdStrike is also facing pending litigation by company shareholders over falling stock prices following the outage, alleging the company's statements about its Falcon software program were false and misleading.
