Alaska Airlines resumes flights after IT outage

Alaska Airlines resumed operations on Thursday after a tech outage that suspended all of its flights for several hours, three months after a similar incident.

"Alaska Airlines operations have been restored after a significant IT outage resulted in a system-wide ground stop of flights," the Seattle-based company said in a statement early Friday, about eight hours after the outage began.

At least 229 flights were canceled, and "additional flight disruptions are likely as we reposition aircraft and crews throughout our network," it added.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has removed an advisory showing the fifth-largest US carrier's flights were suspended.

The outage, which began around 3:30 pm (2230 GMT), "is not a cybersecurity event, and it's not related to any other events," Alaska said earlier in a statement.

The issue began "with a failure at our primary data center," it added, saying that "the safety of our flights was never compromised."

The ground stop also affected its subsidiary Horizon Air, but not Hawaiian Airlines.

About three hours into the outage, some passengers complained about a lack of information.

"Everyone everywhere at SeaTac. No boarding no firm updates," said one X user, Jeff Lawrence, posting a picture of a jam-packed airport waiting room.

The airline experienced a similar outage on July 20, which lasted about three hours.

Alaska Airlines attributed the July problem to the failure of "a critical piece of multi-redundant hardware at our data centers."

Alaska last year also experienced an IT outage that caused disruption and delayed flights.

In January 2024, a door plug section of a new Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight between Portland, Oregon and Ontario, California.

The 171 passengers and six crew members survived the rapid decompression, but the FAA temporarily grounded many Boeing 737-9 aircraft operated by US airlines.