Alaska Airlines vows IT upgrades after outage forces 400 flight cancellations

By Kanishka Singh, Ismail Shakil and David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. carrier Alaska Airlines said Friday it had restored operations after a technology outage that grounded flights across the country and forced it to cancel more than 400 flights, disrupting travel for more than 49,000 passengers. Alaska Air Group said it planned to take immediate actions to upgrade its IT systems after the failure at its primary data center, adding it did not yet have an estimate of the financial impact the disruption may have on its fourth-quarter results. Shares of the airline closed down 6% in heavy volume on Friday. "We're working to get everyone to their destinations as quickly as we can," it said, adding "this level of performance is not acceptable." An IT outage had also forced the airline to ground all its flights for about three hours in July, which trimmed roughly 10 cents from its third-quarter profit per share. Alaska Air said that, following the disruption in July, it had taken action to improve its IT systems, "but this failure underscores the work that remains to be done to ensure system stability." "(We are) immediately bringing in outside technical experts to diagnose our entire IT infrastructure to ensure we are as resilient as we need to be," it added. Alaska Airlines asked the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday evening for a temporary ground stop, which also affected Horizon Air, a subsidiary. The halt was lifted at 11:30 p.m. PDT (0630 GMT Friday), the airline said, adding that the disruption resulted from a system outage and not a cyber attack. The carrier on Thursday forecast fourth-quarter profit well below analysts' expectations, owing to higher fuel costs and operational challenges. It also postponed its earnings call, originally scheduled for October 24, following Thursday's outage. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh, Ismail Shakil, David Shepardson, Mrinmay Dey, Shivansh Tiwary and Abhinav Parmar; Additional reporting by Gnaneshwar Rajan; Editing by Jamie Freed, Christopher Cushing, Jane Merriman, Shinjini Ganguli and Edmund Klamann)

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