- Alaska Airlines Grounds Flights Due to Major IT Outage Affecting 50,000+ Passengers
- The company denies cyber attacks; mentions data center failure and ongoing system recovery
- Similar outcomes occurred in July 2025; external experts are now reviewing the resilience of the infrastructure
Alaska Airlines was forced to cancel hundreds of flights after it experienced an “IT outage that resulted in a system-wide ground stop of Alaska and Horizon Air flights”.
Alaska Airlines confirmed the news in a status update published over the weekend, saying there has been an “error” in its primary data center. It denied this was a cyber attack or similar external incident:
“The IT outage is not a cyber security incident,” it said. “The IT outage is not a cybersecurity event and it is not related to any other events.”
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This incident, unrelated to other events, affected several of Alaska Airlines’ key systems that enable it to run various operations, the release said. As a result, the company was forced to ground hundreds of aircraft.
“The safety of our aircraft was never compromised,” it concluded.
Several other flights were delayed and more than 50,000 passengers were affected by the incident.
Operations were apparently restored early Friday morning, but the company continued to work throughout the weekend to further “normalize” them.
This is the second major outage to hit Alaska Airlines, following a July 2025 issue that also forced the company to fly on the ground.
“Following a similar outage earlier this year, we took action to harden our systems, but this failure underscores the work that still needs to be done to ensure system stability,” the company said in the announcement.
“We are immediately bringing in external technical experts to diagnose our entire IT infrastructure to ensure we are as resilient as we need to be.”
The company did not provide any explanation as to the cause, leading the media and researchers to speculate that it was the work of the Scattered Spider ransomware group – but the airline says this was not the case.
Via The register
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