Alaska Airlines halts flights after data-centre failure; operations slowly restore amid passenger frustration
What happened
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Alaska Airlines briefly suspended operations after a failure at its primary data centre triggered a temporary ground stop that grounded departures to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and disrupted flights across its network. The Seattle-based carrier said it was “actively restoring our operations” after first alerting customers that an information-technology outage was affecting flight activity.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an advisory at 6:13 a.m. Irish time indicating that some flights had resumed, though departures bound for Seattle remained on hold. The carrier said the outage also affected its regional subsidiary Horizon Air but did not involve Hawaiian Airlines, which operates separately.
On the ground: passengers frustrated
Scenes at Seattle-Tacoma International — SeaTac — were familiar to many travellers who remember previous tech meltdowns. Images posted on social platforms showed crowded boarding areas and long lines as passengers waited for word. “Everyone everywhere at SeaTac. No boarding, no firm updates,” wrote one passenger, Jeff Lawrence, along with a photo of a jam-packed waiting room.
Three hours after the outage was announced, some travellers still complained about uneven communication from the airline. Airline officials said safety was never compromised and that teams were working to restore systems, but for weary passengers delays that begin with a data-centre failure often feel like a preventable collapse of the travel experience.
Timeline and prior incidents
- The airline said the disruption began with a failure at its primary data centre.
- The FAA put a temporary ground stop in place and later signalled a partial resumption of flights, while departures to Seattle remained grounded.
- The ground stop affected Horizon Air flights but not Hawaiian Airlines.
Alaska Airlines has faced similar IT problems in recent months. In July, it suffered a three-hour outage the carrier attributed to a failure of “a critical piece of multi-redundant hardware at our data centres.” The company has also dealt with disruptive IT incidents in the past year, and in January 2024 it faced a high-profile safety scare when a door plug blew out on a Boeing 737 Max 9 during flight — a separate issue that led to temporary groundings of that aircraft model.
Why a data-centre failure matters
Modern airlines are tightly woven into digital infrastructure. Flight plans, crew rosters, maintenance logs, gate assignments, baggage systems and passenger notifications often pass through centralized IT systems. When those systems falter, the ripples are immediate and visible across airports and skies.
Industry experts say redundancy and robust contingency planning are essential but not foolproof. “Air travel today depends on high-availability technology. You can have multiple backups, but if maintenance, human error or a single component failure takes out a critical node, the consequences can still be severe,” said Ana Morales, a transportation IT consultant who has worked with carriers on resilience strategies.
Passengers and the politics of reliability
For passengers, repeated disruptions — whether from IT failures or mechanical incidents — erode confidence. Many travellers equate reliability with safety and professionalism; airlines must now manage both the technical restoration and the narrative with customers who increasingly document delays and discomfort in real time.
The regulatory response to such incidents varies. The FAA monitors safety and operational impacts, while consumer protection authorities in many countries focus on delay compensation and information obligations. As airlines become more digitized, questions about oversight of IT resilience are beginning to surface: should regulators require mandatory resilience testing? Should carriers publish contingency plans? And how will insurers and investors respond to the growing operational risks tied to digital systems?
Global trend: airlines, IT and resilience
Alaska’s troubles reflect a broader trend affecting airlines worldwide. From European carriers sidelined by critical IT outages to airport systems overwhelmed by staff shortages and cyberattacks, the industry is wrestling with the double challenge of scaling up digital services while guarding against single points of failure.
Investments in cloud migration, cyber-defences and redundant architectures are rising, but those changes take time and money. For mid-sized carriers such as Alaska, balancing capital investment in fleet modernization and digital resilience with customer expectations and thin operating margins is a daily strategic test.
What passengers can expect next
- Alaska said it was restoring operations and that safety had not been compromised.
- Passengers on affected flights should check airline notifications for rebooking or refund options and consult airport monitors for the latest gate information.
- The FAA will continue to monitor the operational impact and may provide updates if the situation worsens.
As airlines increasingly rely on complex IT systems to run a global transportation network, outages like this one expose the fragility beneath the façade of seamless travel. They also raise practical questions for regulators, executives and travellers alike: are current safeguards adequate, and how much disruption is tolerable in an era when so much rests on a handful of data centres?
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
