A software glitch that emerged last Friday after an update to the Crowd Strike security systems used on many Microsoft computers resulted in chaos at many organizations.But no large company appears to be as impacted as Delta Air Lines, which had more flight cancellations since last Friday than in all of 2018 and 2019 combined.
So why did Delta have more problems than others impacted by the Crowd Strike software?The answer lies in the nature of how the Crowd Strike software interacted with Delta’s applications.This was a “blue screen of death” event for Microsoft users, and disrupted start-up functions at the kernel level of the operating system. That required a total restart of the system from a back-up, and is akin to erasing your hard drive and reloading everything, something that is complex, time consuming, and not easy to accomplish. Delta’s crew scheduling system, which assigns pilots and flight attendants to flights was the application severely impacted and is critical to flight operations.
