Alaska Airlines recently faced a major technology outage that disrupted flights across the United States. The incident grounded hundreds of flights and affected over 49,000 passengers. The airline reported that it had to cancel more than 400 flights due to the system failure.
The problems began when Alaska Airlines experienced a significant issue at its primary data center. This led the airline to request a temporary ground stop from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which also impacted Horizon Air, a subsidiary of Alaska Airlines. The ground stop lasted for several hours but was lifted late Thursday night.
In response to the outage, Alaska Airlines stated it would take immediate steps to upgrade its IT systems. The airline acknowledged that the performance during this incident was unacceptable and emphasized the need for improvements. They plan to bring in outside technical experts to assess their entire IT infrastructure to ensure better reliability in the future.
This isn’t the first time Alaska Airlines has faced such challenges. A similar IT outage in July forced the airline to ground flights for about three hours, which had a noticeable impact on its profits. Following that incident, Alaska Airlines had taken steps to enhance its IT systems, but this recent failure highlighted that more work is needed.
As a result of the outage, Alaska Airlines’ stock fell by 6% on Friday. The airline also postponed its earnings call, originally set for October 24, due to the disruption. They have not yet estimated the financial impact of this latest incident on their fourth-quarter results, but it is expected to be significant, especially with rising fuel costs and other operational challenges.
Alaska Airlines is now focused on getting its passengers to their destinations as quickly as possible while working to prevent such outages in the future.
