Alaska Airlines resumes operations after IT outage
The company requested a system-wide ground stop for Alaska and Horizon Air flights at around 8 p.m. Pacific on Sunday (0300 GMT on Monday) after it said that an outage impacted its systems, and lifted the ground stop by 11 p.m. Pacific, the carrier said.
"As we reposition our aircraft and crews, there will most likely be residual impacts to our flights. It will take some time to get our overall operations back to normal," the Seattle-based company said.
Alaska did not immediately specify the nature of the IT outage.
In April 2024, Alaska grounded its entire fleet due to an issue with the system that calculates the weight and balance of its planes.
Alaska Air Group maintains an operational fleet of 238 Boeing 737 aircraft, and 87 Embraer 175 aircraft, according to its website.
In June, Alaska Air Group-owned Hawaiian Airlines said some of its IT systems were disrupted by a hack. Alaska Air Group said it was still determining the financial impact of that event.
The news of Alaska's IT issues comes at a time when tech companies Google and Palo Alto Networks have warned of the "Scattered Spider" hacking group's interest in the aviation sector.
Canada's WestJet Airlines was struck by an unspecified cyber incident in June, while Australia's Qantas experienced a data breach in July where a cyber hacker accessed the personal information of millions of customers. But those incidents did not affect flying operations.
Separately, Microsoft said on Sunday that there were "active attacks" on its server software used by government agencies and businesses.
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[WASHINGTON] Alaska Airlines said on Monday that it was working to restore normal service after an IT outage prompted a three-hour ground stop that disrupted operations at the carrier and at affiliate Horizon Air. 'We're working to get our operations back on track today,' Alaska Airlines said in a statement to AFP. 'Since Sunday evening, we've had more than 150 flight cancellations, including 64 cancellations today,' said the carrier, the fifth largest US airline. 'Additional flight disruptions are likely as we reposition aircraft and crews.' The outage started at around 0300 GMT and ended at around 0600 GMT, according to Alaska Airlines messages on social media. The airline apologised for the disruption, saying it 'will take some time to get our overall operations back to normal.' Alaska Airlines attributed the problem to the failure of 'a critical piece of multi-redundant hardware at our data centers.' BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up 'The safety of our flights was never compromised,' it added. The airline's outage comes a day after Microsoft warned of 'active attacks' targeting server software used by businesses to share internal documents and urged security updates. But Alaska Airlines said the outage was 'not related to any other current events, and it's not a cybersecurity event,' adding that it was working to replace hardware equipment. 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. '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 disruption and delayed flights. The incident also comes more than a year after 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. AFP
