Tony Fernandes demands compensation after AirAsia affected by CrowdStrike outage

SUBANG (July 23): Capital A Bhd chief executive officer (CEO) Tan Sri Tony Fernandes said today he feels that the airlines affected by the global IT outage over the weekends deserves compensation for their losses.

The AirAsia boss compared the situation to passengers who would ask for refunds when airlines cancel their flights or experience delay.

“I 100 per cent will ask, wouldn’t you? Of course you would,” Fernandes told reporters after being asked if he would demand compensation from Microsoft, whose Windows operating system were affected.

“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.”

Despite Fernandes’ claim, the outage was caused by an error in the update sent by CrowdStrike, a security service that affected Windows machines.

“I shouldn’t ask, they should come to me. Microsoft or, whoever’s right or wrong. They should offer us compensation. Right now we have to wait and see.

“The principal is if we do something wrong we have to compensate, they did something wrong. We and other airlines lost a lot,” he said at the event in Subang’s Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport here.

Microsoft said the global tech outage had affected nearly 8.5 million Microsoft devices.

The outage caused thousands of flights to be cancelled, leaving passengers stranded or grappling with hours of delays as airports and airlines were caught up in the IT outage. – Malay Mail