Flight services resumed by Alaska Airlines following a pause due to IT system failure
On Sunday, July 20, Alaska Airlines temporarily grounded all flights due to a general IT outage that lasted for approximately three hours. The airline, which is the fifth-largest in the United States and serves over 120 destinations across five countries, requested a system-wide ground stop for its flights.
The IT outage occurred around 8:00 pm Pacific Time and impacted hundreds of flights and thousands of passengers. However, the airline and federal authorities have clarified that no cyberattack has been detected or linked to this event.
Alaska Airlines has explicitly stated that the outage was caused by an unexpected failure of a critical piece of multi-redundant hardware at their data centers, manufactured by a third party, and that it was not a cybersecurity incident.
This is the second time in a year that Alaska Airlines has grounded its fleet due to system issues. In April 2024, the airline temporarily grounded all flights due to an error with the system that calculates the weight and balance of its planes. The nature of the technical error was not disclosed.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed the system-wide ground stop for Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air flights. Flights resumed three hours later, at 11:00 pm Pacific Time. The airline stated that it will take some time to get overall operations back to normal after the outage.
The Alaska Air Group currently operates an fleet of 238 Boeing 737 aircraft and 87 Embraer 175 aircraft. It's worth noting that in June 2025, Hawaiian Airlines, owned by the Alaska Air Group, experienced a hack that impacted part of its IT system. The financial impact of this event is still undetermined. However, the nature of the IT issues experienced in June 2025 by Hawaiian Airlines is not disclosed, and there are no known connections between the recent Alaska Airlines IT outages and cyber threats such as the "Scattered Spider" hacking group or the cyberattacks on tech companies Google and Palo Alto Networks.
Passengers are advised to check their flight information for potential residual impacts. The FAA has commented on the Hawaiian Airlines hack, stating that there was no impact on safety.
- Alaska Airlines, known for its eco-friendly initiatives and serving over 120 destinations worldwide, faced another system-wide outage, grounding all flights on July 20, 20XX.
- The recent IT outage, which affected hundreds of flights and thousands of passengers, was caused by a hardware failure, not a cyberattack, as was previously suspected.
- Despite the second system-wide grounding in a year, the nature of the technical errors experienced by Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, both part of the Alaska Air Group, remain undisclosed.
- In the aftermath of the IT outage, passengers are urged to keep updated on their flight information, while sports enthusiasts and nature lovers eagerly anticipate resuming their travel for general-news, sports, and eco-destinations.
