Delta Air Lines CEO says CrowdStrike outage to cost carrier $500 mln, CNBC reports

Delta Air Lines DAL will take a $500 million hit related to the CrowdStrike CRWD outage, the carrier's CEO Ed Bastian said in a CNBC interview on Wednesday.

The airline has been the slowest among major U.S. carriers to recover following the tech failure that led to more than 2,200 flight cancellations on July 19.

Bastian apologized to Delta customers and said the airline, which relies heavily on Microsoft and CrowdStrike's technology services, took the hardest hit from the outage.

Analysts estimate the impact on Delta's bottom line to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

CNBC reported earlier this week that Delta had hired a law firm and would seek compensation from Microsoft and CrowdStrike over the outage.

Last week, the U.S. Transportation Department also announced it would open an investigation into Delta following the flight cancellations due to the outage.