Authors Gursimran Mehar and Shivani Tanna
(Reuters) – American Airlines Alaska Airlines resumed operations late Sunday after it shut down about three hours of flights due to IT disruption, marking the second time it had stopped its fleet in just over a year.
The airline said the company requested system-wide ground stops for Alaska and Horizon Airlines at around 8 a.m. Sunday at 8 p.m. (0300 GMT on Monday) for Alaska and Horizon Airlines, after it said the power outage had an impact on its system and lifted the ground stops up to 11 p.m. in the Pacific.
“When we reset the plane and crew, it’s likely that there will be a residual impact on our flights. It will take some time to get our overall operations back to normal,” the Seattle-based company said.
Alaska did not immediately specify the nature of IT interruptions.
In April 2024, Alaska took the entire fleet into root due to system issues, which calculated the weight and balance of the aircraft.
According to its website, Alaska Airlines Group maintains an operating fleet of 238 Boeing 737 aircraft and 175 aircraft for 87 Embraer.
In June, Hawaiian Airlines, owned by Alaska Airlines Group, said some of its IT systems were hacked. Alaska Airlines Group said it is still determining the financial impact of the activity.
News about the Alaska IT issue comes at a time when tech companies Google and Palo Alto Networks warned the “scattered spider” hacker team about interest in the aviation sector.
Canada’s WestJet Airlines hit an unspecified cyber incident in June by Qantas Australia, which was exposed to a data breach in July, and cyber hackers accessed the personal information of millions of customers. But these events will not affect the flight operation.
Microsoft said on Sunday that there were “active attacks” on server software used by its government agencies and businesses.
Alaska did not immediately respond to requests for whether the power outage was related to a Microsoft announcement.
(Reports by Gursimran Kaur and Shivani Tanna in Bangalore; Editors of Rashmi Aich, Jamie Freed and Kate Mayberry)
