Alaska Air Resumes Flights After IT Outage Led to Grounding

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Alaska Air Group Inc. continued to recover on Monday after temporarily grounding its entire fleet due to a data center equipment failure that affected several of the carrier’s key operating systems.

Eighty-three Alaska Air flights, or about 9% of its total, had been canceled as of midday, along with 22 at subsidiary Horizon Air, according to FlightAware data. More than 150 flights at the two carriers were grounded Sunday, the airline said.

A “critical piece of multi-redundant hardware” at Alaska’s data centers suffered an unexpected failure around 8 p.m. Pacific time on Sunday, Alaska Air said in a statement, declining to provide additional detail.

“The safety of our flights was never compromised,” the airline said. The ground stop was lifted around 11 p.m.

It’s the second time in just over a year Alaska Air has had to briefly ground its fleet because of IT problems. In April 2024, the carrier temporarily halted flights after experiencing an issue while upgrading the system that calculates weight and balance.

That disruption came about three months after a door plug on a Boeing Co. plane blew out mid-flight and upended Alaska Air’s operations.