An outage at Alaska Airlines caused significant disruption, grounding flights for three hours on July 20. The airline clarified that the incident was not a cyberattack, but rather resulted from a hardware failure in a multi-redundant third-party device within one of its data centers.
Initially, there was concern that the outage could have been linked to recent cybersecurity issues facing the aviation industry, especially as Hawaiian Airlines—a company recently acquired by Alaska Airlines—suffered a cyberattack in June. Additionally, Microsoft’s warnings of active attacks on its on-premises SharePoint servers added to the scrutiny during this period.
However, Alaska Airlines reassured customers that the IT outage was unrelated to any cybersecurity events. The grounding of flights was announced around 8 PM Pacific Time, with operations resuming by 11 PM after a system-wide ground stop was initiated. The failure of the critical hardware impacted several key systems essential for operational processes.
In total, Alaska Airlines canceled over 150 flights since the outage, including 64 on the following day, and indicated that further disruptions could occur as aircraft and crew were being repositioned across their network. The airline confirmed that flight safety was never compromised during this outage.
Experts noted that even systems designed with redundancy can fail, emphasizing that the investments in such technology must be appropriate. The unexpected hardware failure raises questions about the reliability of multi-redundant systems, with discussions of the types of hardware that could have failed, such as RAID arrays or load balancers.
While Alaska Airlines has yet to determine the total cost of this outage, it is expected to be substantial, potentially reaching millions in lost revenue. The incident underlines the critical nature of redundancy in enterprise operations and the need for firms to manage and maintain such technologies effectively.
Further information about the problems faced by Alaska Airlines and the importance of redundancy in IT systems can be explored in more detail in similar reports and analyses.
