Alaska Airlines Resumes Flights After Massive IT Outage—Cybersecurity Fears on the Rise

Passengers across the U.S. faced travel chaos on Sunday night as Alaska Airlines grounded all its flights for nearly three hours due to a major IT outage. Operations have since resumed, but the cause of the disruption remains a mystery, raising renewed concerns about cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the aviation sector.

The airline, headquartered in Seattle, halted all Alaska and Horizon Air flights starting around 8 p.m. Pacific Time. The system-wide ground stop was lifted by 11 p.m., but the fallout from the event is far from over. “As we reposition our aircraft and crews, there will most likely be residual impacts to our flights,” Alaska Airlines said in a public statement. “It will take some time to get our overall operations back to normal.”

While the airline stopped short of confirming a cyberattack, the timing is suspicious. Just weeks earlier, Hawaiian Airlines, owned by Alaska Air Group, reported a cybersecurity breach affecting some of its internal systems. That incident followed a disturbing pattern of airline-related cyber threats worldwide.

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In June 2025, Canada’s WestJet Airlines suffered a cyber incident, and in July, Australia’s Qantas admitted that hackers had accessed the personal data of millions of customers. And just days ago, Microsoft warned of “active attacks” targeting its server software, used widely across industries including aviation.

Could Alaska’s latest outage be linked to these growing threats? While no official confirmation has been made, tech giants like Google and Palo Alto Networks have repeatedly warned about the “Scattered Spider” hacking group, a sophisticated collective known to target airlines and infrastructure.

At approximately 8 p.m. Pacific on July 20, we experienced an IT outage that resulted in a temporary, system-wide ground stop for Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air flights.

As of 11 p.m. Pacific, the ground stop has been lifted, and our operations have resumed.

As we reposition…

— Alaska Airlines News (@AlaskaAirNews) July 21, 2025

This is not the first time Alaska Airlines has faced serious tech trouble. In April 2024, the airline grounded its entire fleet due to issues with the system that calculates aircraft weight and balance, a critical safety metric. With Sunday’s glitch being the second fleet-wide stoppage in just over a year, many are questioning the airline’s digital preparedness.

Alaska Air Group operates a fleet of 238 Boeing 737s and 87 Embraer 175s, making it one of the largest U.S. carriers. A prolonged outage like this affects not just thousands of passengers, but also cargo, airport logistics, and scheduling infrastructure nationwide.

So far, Alaska Airlines has not responded to questions about a possible link to Microsoft’s security warning or whether sensitive data was compromised.

For now, flights are moving—but trust in the tech behind them may not be.