US carrier Alaska Airlines halted its flights due to an IT disruption on Sunday, impacting its systems and marking the second time the airline has grounded its fleet within a 14-month period. The company did not disclose the specifics of the outage but stated that an IT issue occurred around 8pm Pacific on Sunday (0300 GMT on Monday), leading to a system-wide ground stop for flights operated by both Alaska and Horizon Air. As a result, there were expected to be ongoing effects on the airline’s operations throughout the evening. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and updates on its status page showed that all destinations affected by the ground stop of Alaska’s mainline aircraft and the suspension of Horizon’s flights.
Alaska grounded its entire fleet in April 2024 due to a system issue that calculated the weight and balance of its planes. This incident occurred a few months after a door panel of an Alaska Airlines-operated Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet blew off midair. The Seattle-based airline operates a fleet of 238 Boeing 737 aircraft and 87 Embraer 175 aircraft, according to its website.
In June, Alaska Air Group-owned Hawaiian Airlines reported disruptions to some of its IT systems following a hack. It is still determining the financial impact of that event. The recent news of Alaska’s IT problems follows warnings from Google and Palo Alto Networks about the “Scattered Spider” hacking group targeting the aviation sector.
Canada’s WestJet Airlines was affected by an unspecified cyber incident in June, and Australia’s Qantas confirmed a cyber-attack exposed the personal records of up to 6 million customers in July. It is unclear whether Alaska’s outage is related to Microsoft’s claim on Sunday of “active attacks” on its server software used by government agencies and businesses. Alaska did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the potential connection between the outage and Microsoft’s announcement.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/21/alaska-airlines-grounds-flights-after-it-outage
