Alaska Grounded After Data-Center Failure; Shares Fall

On Oct. 23 Alaska Airlines and sister carrier Horizon Air suffered a catastrophic failure at their primary data center that triggered a systemwide ground stop of roughly eight hours. The outage canceled an estimated 360–400 flights and disrupted about 49,000 passengers, producing long lines and app failures at major hubs; the carrier said safety was never compromised and that the incident was not a cybersecurity attack. Alaska apologized, called the performance unacceptable, and acknowledged prior hardening efforts were insufficient after a July hardware failure, making this the second major IT incident in four months. The airline paused its scheduled Q3 earnings call, warned of continued operational impacts and potential financial effects, and its shares fell about 6% after the disruption. Alaska said it is bringing in outside technical experts to diagnose and reinforce its hybrid IT infrastructure to improve resilience going forward.