Alaska Airlines Grounded Again: IT Glitch Halts 325 Planes Amid Rising Cybersecurity Fears

Alaska Airlines (NYSE: ALK) halted all of its flights late Sunday after an IT system failure brought its operations to a standstill. The airline disclosed the outage began around 8 p.m. Pacific Time and forced a system-wide ground stop that affected both Alaska Airlines and its regional subsidiary Horizon Air.

The Seattle-based carrier hasn't shared specifics on the cause or the extent of the disruption, only noting that residual operational issues lingered into Monday morning. This marks the second major operational shutdown Alaska has faced in a little over a year. Back in April 2024, the entire fleet was grounded due to problems with the software responsible for calculating aircraft weight and balance-a critical safety function. That incident came after a scare involving a Boeing (NYSE: BA) 737 MAX 9 that lost a door panel midflight.

Alaska Air Group's fleet totals 238 Boeing 737s and 87 Embraer 175s. The company also owns Hawaiian Airlines, which grappled with a hacking-related outage earlier this year in June. The financial fallout from that breach has yet to be fully disclosed.

This latest technology glitch at Alaska lands amid growing anxieties over cybersecurity in the airline sector. Tech giants like Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) recently flagged interest from the hacking group "Scattered Spider" in aviation targets. On top of that, rivals such as Canada's WestJet and Australia's Qantas have suffered cyber incidents in recent months.

Whether Alaska's outage ties into these broader cybersecurity threats is still up in the air. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) reported active assaults on its server software used by government and business clients just hours before Alaska's systems went down. So far, Alaska has declined to comment on any connection to those attacks.

The FAA's status updates confirmed the ground stop, listing all destinations impacted by Alaska's suspended mainline and regional flights. The agency didn't issue a statement publicly outside regular office hours.

Alaska Airlines' latest operational hiccup is a sharp reminder of how vulnerable large carriers remain to IT failures, even as technology becomes more embedded in every aspect of air travel. For a company juggling growth, fleet safety concerns, and now cyber threats, these outages aren't just operational headaches-they're a stark message about the stakes in aviation tech management.