While most flights were back in the air within a couple of days, Delta was hobbled for five days and canceled an outsized 7,000 flights. The Atlanta-based company is now duking it out publicly with CrowdStrike and Microsoft over who is responsible for the episode and the airline's dented reputation.

Delta’s bottom line is taking a hit from the CrowdStrike outage as it seeks legal recourse for a meltdown that led to thousands of flight disruptions.