Queues of passengers at the AirAsia check-in counters at Don Mueang Airport in Bangkok on July 20, 2024. A significant global outage on July 19 affected Microsoft services. — Getty Images/The New York Times
On July 19, a flawed update from US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike crashed Windows PCs all over the world, with computers displaying the dreaded “blue screen of death”.
The outage hit global airlines particularly hard, disrupting thousands of flights as staff scrambled to get systems back online. Some airlines, like US carrier Delta Air Lines, are still struggling.
Tony Fernandes, CEO of Capital A, owner of low-cost carrier AirAsia, says he’s “100%” asking for compensation from Microsoft, the developer of the Windows operating system.
“If I delay my flight, you would come after me for a refund, right? Or if I cancel my flight, it means I need to give you a refund,” Fernandes told reporters at an event in Subang, Malaysia.
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“The principle is if we do something wrong, we have to compensate. They did something wrong. We and other airlines lost a lot,” he said.
Total financial losses from the CrowdStrike outage could reach as high as US$15bil (RM69.69bil), insurer Parametrix estimated on Wednesday. The cost to Fortune 500 companies alone could be over US$5bil (RM23.23bil).
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Malaysia's digital minister has also chimed in. On July 24, Gobind Singh Deo suggested to reporters that five government agencies and nine companies were among those affected in Malaysia, and that he’d met with representatives from Microsoft and CrowdStrike to seek a full report, according to Reuters.
Services at Asian airports needed to be done manually when the outage first hit on July 19, with passengers facing delays at both Singapore’s Changi Airport and the Hong Kong International Airport. The outage affected services at over 10 airlines in Singapore and at least five in Hong Kong, according to local media reports.
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Airlines are still picking up the pieces from Friday’s outage. Delta is still cancelling hundreds of flights, with over 6,000 flight cancellations since the outage began. It’s the worst affected among the major US carriers, and is now being probed by the US Department of Transportation.
Fernandes has been on the warpath regarding Microsoft and CrowdStrike since the outage. On July 21, the airline executive complained in a LinkedIn post that “tech companies have little empathy” for what airlines went through during the pandemic.
“Now they have issues they expect us all to understand. Well, I'm not going to. Airlines need answers and compensation,” he wrote. – Fortune.com/The New York Times
