An IT outage led to a system-wide grounding of Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air flights on Sunday that affected thousands of travelers, including some flying to or from Fairbanks.
An Alaska travel writer called the move uncommon, though local officials say residual impacts at the Fairbanks International Airport should be minimal.
The ground stop lasted about three hours before flights resumed Sunday night around 10 p.m. Alaska time. In a Monday statement, Alaska Airlines said a critical piece of data center hardware had unexpectedly failed, impacting “key systems that enable us to run various operations.”
The carrier said temporarily grounding the fleet resulted in nearly 200 flight cancellations and altered travel plans for about 13,500 passengers, with additional disruptions possible.
“It’s uncommon. It’s very uncommon,” Alaska travel writer Scott McMurren told KUAC Monday when asked about the frequency of such incidents. He publishes the Alaska Travelgram and has worked in the business for more than 30 years.
McMurren said he’s expecting the airline to release more details about the incident since it affected so many people’s plans.
“An IT problem? Do tell," he said. "That covers a lot of ground. That really is a broad net to throw over an operational incident like this.”
A third-party vendor manufactured the problem hardware, which is now in the process of being replaced, according to the airline. The statement says the outage was not because of a cybersecurity issue and that passenger safety was never compromised.
McMurren said it’s rare for a carrier to halt all its flights, something that usually happens following accidents. He said it’s welcome news the grounding wasn’t caused by a tragedy, but that the airline’s stated reason piques his curiosity.
“I’m as interested as other people are with respect to what caused this – because things happen, things happen," he said. "And again, thank Heaven this wasn’t a crash or engine failure or stuff like that because that’s the worst.”
Locally, five total flights had been cancelled at Fairbanks International Airport as of Monday afternoon due to the incident, according to airport spokesperson Hailey Standish, all of which had been scheduled to head to or from Seattle or Anchorage.
But Standish wrote by email Monday that any further delays at the Fairbanks airport are “expected to be minimal, and most of the delays occurring are due to standard operational issues rather than the ground stop.”
Scott McCrea, CEO of tourism marketing agency Explore Fairbanks, also told KUAC Monday that he had not “heard of any significant impacts” to stakeholders in the local visitor industry as a result of the grounded flights.