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If you’re flying on Alaska Airlines today, brace for disruptions. An IT outage that began on Thursday afternoon has caused the airliner to cancel more than 360 flights.
The outage “led to a systemwide ground stop for Alaska and Horizon Air flights,” the airline said on Friday. For now, the company has only said that the “IT outage is not a cybersecurity event, and it’s not related to any other events.” But it’s the second incident since July, when the airline was forced to ground over 200 flights because of a separate IT outage.
In this case, the problem began at around 3:30 p.m. PT Thursday due to a failure at Alaska Airline’s primary data center. The ground stop persisted until 11:30 p.m. But even after it was lifted, the airline was still forced to cancel flights this morning. As a result, social media has been full of would-be flyers complaining about the disruption.
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“They just canceled tonight’s flights and sent everyone in the airport to one customer service desk,” tweeted radio host Ari Hoffman, who posted a video of several dozen people waiting.
Other users report their rescheduled flights were later canceled, or that attempts to rebook or change their flights online encountered an error. FlightAware adds that Alaska Airlines delayed 239 flights on Thursday and another 498 flights today. Alaska is allowing people to cancel flights for a full refund if they don’t want to rebook.
In response, Alaska Airlines says it’s “working to restore operations to normal as quickly and safely as possible,” but cautions that “additional flight disruptions are likely as we reposition aircraft and crews throughout our network.”
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Flights on Hawaiian Airlines, which is owned by Alaska Air Group, are not impacted
As for the IT outage in July, Alaska Airlines traced it to “a critical piece of multi-redundant hardware at our data centers, manufactured by a third-party.” The hardware experienced an unexpected failure, forcing Alaska Airlines to work with its vendor to replace it.
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About Our Expert
Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
Experience
I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. Earlier this year, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I’m now following how President Trump’s tariffs will affect the industry. I’m always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.
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