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Alaska Airlines has resumed normal flight operations after an unexpected IT outage forced the airline to ground all of its planes for several hours. The issue also affected flights operated by Horizon Air, a regional airline owned by Alaska.
While the immediate crisis has passed, Alaska Airlines has warned that delays will likely continue as they work to reposition aircraft and crews. The airline shared in a statement on X (formerly Twitter) that it may take time to return to full, regular service.
During the outage, roughly 11 Alaska Airlines flights were already in the air. These continued safely to their destinations, but no new flights were allowed to depart during the disruption. The problem was eventually resolved after a few hours, though the root cause remains unknown.
So far, Alaska Airlines has not confirmed what caused the outage. However, some industry observers suspect it may be linked to a ransomware group known as Scattered Spider, which has previously targeted airlines including Qantas, Air Serbia, and WestJet. Hawaiian Airlines, which Alaska Airlines began acquiring in late 2024, also reported a cyber incident earlier this year involving its IT systems.
This latest outage marks the second major IT-related disruption for Alaska Airlines in just over a year. In April 2024, a separate technical issue involving flight load calculations also led to a full fleet grounding.
The timing of the incident is also raising questions, as Microsoft announced on July 20 that it was facing “active attacks” on its server software, though it’s not clear if there’s any connection between the two events.
At the time of writing, Alaska Airlines has not released further details about the July 21 outage. TechRadar Pro reached out for comment but has not received a response.