Alaska Airlines has canceled more than 150 flights — including 64 on Monday alone — following a system-wide ground stop caused by a critical IT hardware failure at its data centers late Sunday.
The airline temporarily halted all Alaska and Horizon Air flights for approximately three hours starting around 8 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday after a key piece of multi-redundant hardware unexpectedly failed. Operations resumed around 11 p.m., but the impact is expected to linger for days.
“Additional flight disruptions are likely as we reposition aircraft and crews throughout our network,” the airline said in a statement.
Not a cybersecurity incident
The Seattle-based carrier stressed that the issue is not related to any recent cybersecurity incidents, including the attack involving Microsoft servers over the weekend or the June breach reported by its Hawaiian Airlines subsidiary.
“This was not a cybersecurity event,” Alaska Airlines confirmed, attributing the failure to third-party manufactured hardware.
The airline said “a critical piece of multi-redundant hardware at our data centers, manufactured by a third-party, experienced an unexpected failure.”
The airline clarified that the incident was unrelated to other recent events, including the Microsoft server attack over the weekend and the June cybersecurity breach at its Hawaiian Airlines subsidiary.
The failed equipment impacted several core systems required for flight operations, though Alaska did not specify which systems were affected. The airline is now working closely with the vendor to replace the faulty hardware.