Alaska Grounded After Data Center Failure; Earnings Postponed

Alaska Airlines halted operations Oct. 23 after a failure at its primary data center forced a systemwide ground stop for Alaska and Horizon Air beginning around 3:30 p.m. PT; the pause was lifted several hours later, about 11:30 p.m. PT. The outage canceled more than 229 flights and the carrier warned additional disruptions could occur as it repositioned aircraft and crews; Alaska said safety was never compromised and that the incident was not a cybersecurity event. Passengers reported being stranded, long hold times and app failures—especially at Seattle–Tacoma International Airport—and the airline postponed its Q3 earnings call. The disruption follows a similar July outage and adds to a year of major U.S. airline IT failures, raising questions about system resilience. The incident also compounds financial pressures at Alaska Air Group: the company reported Q3 revenue of $3.8 billion, year-over-year profit declines, and management revised full-year forecasts downward.