Alaska Airlines cancels flights: Airline warns more flight 'cancellations are possible' after IT outage - was it a cybersecurity incident?
Alaska Airline has warned more flight “cancellations are possible” after an IT outage.
The airline was forced to ground its planes and cancel more than 200 flights after a “significant IT outage” on Sunday evening (20 July). The airline has since issued an updated statement to passengers.
It said: “Flight operations at Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air are returning to normal following a significant IT outage that resulted in a system-wide ground stop of flights. The ground stop began around 8 p.m. on Sunday and was lifted three hours later.
“A critical piece of multi-redundant hardware at our data centers, manufactured by a third-party, experienced an unexpected failure. When that happened, it impacted several of our key systems that enable us to run various operations, necessitating the implementation of a ground stop to keep aircraft in position. The safety of our flights was never compromised”.
It added: “Since Sunday evening, we’ve had more than 200 flight cancellations. We experienced 116 cancellations on Monday, which affected the travel plans of 15,600 guests. Additional cancellations are possible.
“The IT outage was unrelated to any other current events and was not a cybersecurity incident. We are currently working with our vendor to replace the hardware equipment at the data center.”
The airline issued updated advice to its passengers. It advises passengers to check your flight status before leaving for the airport, adding that a flexible travel policy is in place to support its guests.