Alaska Airlines resumes flights after 'IT outage'
The airline apologized for the disruption, and urged travelers to check their flight status before heading to the airport -- adding it "will take some time to get our overall operations back to normal".
The airline earlier told AFP it "experienced an IT outage that's impacting our operations" and that it had "requested a temporary, system-wide ground stop for Alaska and Horizon Air flights until the issue is resolved."
Before the grounding was lifted, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) status page showed all destinations affected by the halt of Alaska's mainline aircraft.
"We apologize for the inconvenience," Alaska Airlines said in a statement.
"As we reposition our aircraft and crews, there will most likely be residual impacts to our flights."
In a separate statement posted on X, the airline said it has "resolved its earlier IT outage", without giving details.
The grounding drew a backlash from frustrated passengers.
"This is brutal. We've been sitting at the airport for two hours," wrote an X user named Caleb Heimlich in one of such replies.
"It's 10:20 pm, people are tired, hungry, etc. This is not okay," said another.
Alaska last year also experienced an IT outage that caused significant disruption to its operations, including delayed flights.
At the time, multiple users complained they were facing difficulties accessing its app and website.
- Active attacks? -
The airline's latest outage comes a day after Microsoft warned of "active attacks" targeting server software used by businesses to share internal documents and urged security updates.
Alaska Airlines did not immediately respond to AFP's request to clarify whether the outage was linked to the Microsoft issue.
The incident also comes more than a year after a door plug section of a newly delivered Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight between Portland, Oregon and Ontario, California in January last year.
The 171 passengers and six crew members survived the rapid decompression, but the FAA later grounded many Boeing 737-9 aircraft operated by US airlines.
Last month, US investigators said Boeing's failure to provide adequate training to manufacturing staff was a driving factor in the near-catastrophic Alaska Airlines mid-flight blowout.
Alaska Air Group has a fleet of 325 aircraft, comprising 238 Boeing 737 planes and 87 Embraer 175 aircraft, according to its website.
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Trump's trip to Scotland as his new golf course opens blurs politics and the family's business
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But she added that Trump 'has built the best and most beautiful world-class golf courses anywhere in the world, which is why they continue to be used for prestigious tournaments and by the most elite players in the sport.' Trump family's new golf course has tee times for sale Trump went to Scotland to play his Turnberry course during his first term in 2018 while en route to a meeting in Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This time, his trip comes as the new golf course is about to debut and is already actively selling tee times. It's not cheap for the president to travel. The helicopters that operate as Marine One when the president is on board cost between $16,700 and nearly $20,000 per hour to operate, according to Pentagon data for fiscal year 2022. The modified Boeing 747s that serve as the iconic Air Force One cost about $200,000 per hour to fly. That's not to mention the military cargo aircraft that fly ahead of the president with his armored limousines and other official vehicles. 'We're at a point where the Trump administration is so intertwined with the Trump business that he doesn't seem to see much of a difference,' said Jordan Libowitz, vice president and spokesperson for the ethics watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. 'It's as if the White House were almost an arm of the Trump Organization.' During his first term, the Trump Organization signed an ethics pact barring deals with foreign companies. An ethics frameworks for Trump's second term allows them. Trump's assets are in a trust run by his children, who are also handling day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization while he's in the White House. The company has inked many recent, lucrative foreign agreements involving golf courses, including plans to build luxury developments in Qatar and Vietnam, even as the administration continues to negotiate tariff rates for those countries and around the globe. Trump's first Aberdeen course has sparked legal battles Trump's existing Aberdeenshire course, meanwhile, has a history nearly as rocky as the area's cliffs. It has struggled to turn a profit and was found by Scottish conservation authorities to have partially destroyed nearby sand dunes. Trump's company also was ordered to cover the Scottish government's legal costs after the course unsuccessfully sued over the construction of a nearby wind farm, arguing in part that it hurt golfers' views. And the development was part of the massive civil case, which accused Trump of inflating his wealth to secure loans and make business deals. Trump's company's initial plans for his first Aberdeen-area course called for a luxury hotel and nearby housing. His company received permission to build 500 houses, but Trump suggested he'd be allowed to build five times as many and borrowed against their values without actually building any homes, the lawsuit alleged. Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump liable last year and ordered his company to pay $355 million in fines — a judgment that has grown with interest to more than $510 million as Trump appeals. Golfers-in-chief Family financial interests aside, Trump isn't the first sitting U.S. president to golf in Scotland. That was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who played in Turnberry in 1959. George W. Bush visited the famed course at Gleneagles in 2005 but didn't play. Many historians trace golf back to Scotland in the Middle Ages. Among the earliest known references to game was a Scottish Parliament resolution in 1457 that tried to ban it, along with soccer, because of fears both were distracting men from practicing archery — then considered vital to national defense. The first U.S. president to golf regularly was William Howard Taft, who served from 1909 to 1913 and ignored warnings from his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, that playing too much would make it seem like he wasn't working hard enough. Woodrow Wilson played nearly every day but Sundays, and even had the Secret Service paint his golf balls red so he could practice in the snow, said Mike Trostel, director of the World Golf Hall of Fame. Warren G. Harding trained his dog Laddie Boy to fetch golf balls while he practiced. Lyndon B. Johnson's swing was sometimes described as looking like a man trying to kill a rattlesnake. Bill Clinton, who liked to joke that he was the only president whose game improved while in office, restored a putting green on the White House's South Lawn. It was originally installed by Eisenhower, who was such an avid user that he left cleat marks in the wooden floors of the Oval Office by the door leading out to it. Bush stopped golfing after the start of the Iraq war in 2003 because of the optics. Barack Obama had a golf simulator installed in the White House that Trump upgraded during his first term, Trostel said. John F. Kennedy largely hid his love of the game as president, but he played on Harvard's golf team and nearly made a hole-in-one at California's renowned Cypress Point Golf Club just before the 1960 Democratic National Convention. 'I'd say, between President Trump and President John F. Kennedy, those are two of the most skilled golfers we've had in the White House,' Trostel said. Trump, Trostel said, has a handicap index — how many strokes above par a golfer is likely to score — of a very strong 2.5, though he's not posted an official round with the U.S. Golf Association since 2021. That's better than Joe Biden's handicap of 6.7, which also might be outdated, and Obama, who once described his own handicap as an 'honest 13.' The White House described Trump as a championship-level golfer but said he plays with no handicap. ___ Associated Press writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report. Will Weissert, The Associated Press
