Alaska Airlines to Audit IT Systems After Major Outage Grounds Flights
GeokHub
Contributing Writer
Air Group says it will partner with Accenture to conduct a full audit of its information systems after a recent technology failure grounded flights across the United States.
The outage—tied to a global disruption in Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform—forced Alaska to cancel over 400 flights, affecting more than 49,000 passengers. Key systems like website access, reservations, and operations were rendered offline during the disruption.
In its regulatory filing, Alaska Air noted that the source of the failure has been traced to Azure, which provides cloud and infrastructure services to many of its digital operations. The airline has vowed to closely scrutinize its vendor dependencies, internal IT resilience, and fallback systems.
As part of the audit, Alaska intends to re-examine system architecture, assess cybersecurity protocols, and stress-test disaster recovery plans. It also plans to update its fourth-quarter forecast once the full cost of the outage is tallied.
This isn’t the first time Alaska has faced a technology failure. Earlier this month, the airline announced software upgrades after a prior system collapse led to widespread cancellations. That earlier failure had already put pressure on investors and raised questions about its operational stability.
