A significant U.S. airline halted all departures for hours on Thursday night amid a tech outage.
Shortly after 7:20 p.m. EDT, Alaska Airways introduced a nationwide floor cease, citing an IT problem that had affected its operations.
The tech outage affected each Alaska’s mainline operation and its flights operated by regional subsidiary Horizon Air.
Alaska’s outage didn’t have an effect on Hawaiian Airways, a spokesperson confirmed to TPG. Hawaiian is run by the identical mum or dad firm as Alaska, however operates as a separate model.
Thursday’s disruption threatened to trigger important flight delays throughout the airline’s community, which incorporates a number of main hubs on the West Coast — from Seattle to Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.
“We apologize for the inconvenience. In case you’re scheduled to fly tonight, please verify your flight standing earlier than heading to the airport,” the Seattle-based service mentioned in an announcement posted to its official social media account.
Checking the airline’s cell app late Thursday, a message on the prime confirmed the continued expertise issues affecting the service’s programs.
Whereas it wasn’t instantly clear what number of flights had been initially affected by the bottom cease, a multi-hour disruption may trigger cascading journey troubles late into Thursday evening — and maybe residual issues on Friday.
Late Thursday, Alaska issued a journey waiver to permit passengers further flexibility to vary or cancel their flight. The advisory coated flights with an unique journey date of Thursday or Friday, and allowed rebooking to any day between Thursday and Monday.
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Passengers who encounter flight cancellations and main delays are entitled to a refund underneath U.S. Division of Transportation insurance policies — in the event that they in the end select to not fly with the airline as an alternative of accepting rebooking.
Learn extra: Flight canceled or delayed? Here is what to do subsequent
Nevertheless, Alaska has additionally made a variety of ensures for passenger lodging when there is a main flight disruption inside the airline’s management — usually, a tech outage falls underneath that class. These particulars will be discovered on the DOT’s FlightRights.gov dashboard.
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