Updated at 8:40 p.m. Pacific.
Alaska Airlines said it’s recovering from an IT outage and “actively restoring operations” as of 7 p.m. Thursday after grounding flights across the U.S. for about three hours.
In a statement sent to GeekWire, Alaska said the outage began around 3:30 p.m. PT with a failure at the company’s primary data center.
“The IT outage has impacted several of our key systems that enable us to run various operations, necessitating the implementation of the ground stop to keep our aircraft in position,” the company said. “The safety of our flights was never compromised.”
The outage was not a cybersecurity event or related to other events, according to Alaska.
Flights are resuming but passengers at some airports are facing long delays as they await inbound planes.
During the outage, passengers on Reddit reported that some planes were sitting on the tarmac or de-boarding. Customers also reported issues with the company’s app and website.
It was Alaska’s second outage in three months. The Seattle-based airline grounded flights after an outage in July that lasted about three hours.
