An IT outage that grounded all Alaska Airlines flights Sunday night led to cancellations Monday at the Anchorage and Fairbanks international airports.
Seven flights out of Alaska had been canceled as of 10 a.m. Monday: three flights between Fairbanks and Seattle and four between Anchorage and Seattle. Both airports are expecting delays because of the outage. Several flights also departed late, according to the website FlightAware.
“A critical piece of multi-redundant hardware at our data centers, manufactured by a third-party, experienced an unexpected failure,” Alaska Airlines said in a statement. “When that happened, it impacted several of our key systems that enable us to run various operations.”
Terry Haines, producer of the Alaska Fisheries Report and a radio host at KMXT, lives in Kodiak and was heading home from Redding, Calif., when the outage hit. His flight was supposed to leave SeaTac at 5 p.m. Sunday, he said.
“They rerouted me. They had me flying from Seattle to Chicago, and then from Chicago to Anchorage, and then from Anchorage to Kodiak. And I said, ‘Well, maybe I can get on the phone and change this,’” he said.
He was able to change his flight to continue to Anchorage through Seattle, but by the time he was expected to get home, it was likely to be over a day late.
According to Alaska Airlines, the outage was not caused by a cybersecurity breach, and passenger safety was not jeopardized.
Over 200 flights nationwide had been canceled since Sunday evening because of the outage, the airline said.
Alaska Airlines grounded its fleet in April 2024 for about an hour because of an issue with a system that calculates weight and balance of planes.
“We appreciate the patience of our guests whose travel plans have been disrupted,” the airlines’ Monday statement said. “We’re working to get them to their destinations as quickly as we can. Before heading to the airport, we encourage flyers to check their flight status.”
