IT Crash at Alaska Airlines: All Flights Grounded, Hundreds Canceled
On Thursday afternoon, Alaska Airlines reported a “significant IT outage” at its Seattle-area data center news.alaskaair.com. Soon after 3:30 pm Pacific, the airline imposed a system-wide ground stop on all Alaska and Horizon flights news.alaskaair.com. By 11:30 pm PT the carrier announced the ground stop was lifted and flights were resuming news.alaskaair.com. In a midnight Pacific statement, Alaska said it was “working to get our operations back on track as quickly and safely as possible” news.alaskaair.com. Alaska urged passengers to check flight status before going to airports and noted it was enforcing a flexible rebooking policy to accommodate disrupted travelers news.alaskaair.com. The company expressed regret for the “inconvenience” and promised to transport guests “to their destinations as quickly as we can” news.alaskaair.com ndtv.com. In social media posts, the airline fielded customer queries and said its IT team was fixing an “error on our system” reuters.com. Alaska has not blamed any external cyber threat; it explicitly called the outage “not a cybersecurity event” news.alaskaair.com and unrelated to its recent merger with Hawaiian news.alaskaair.com.
