Americans have been warned to brace for travel chaos this morning after Alaska Airlines was forced to ground its entire fleet for more than three hours at short notice.
The major airline issued an extraordinary request at 10.50pm EST to the US Federal Aviation Administration to stop all mainline flights across the United States due to a system-wide IT outage.
Alaska Airlines has as many as 238 planes in its fleet – all of which are Boeing aircrafts – and its biggest hubs include Seattle, Portland, LA and San Francisco.
Shortly after the initial request, a secondary order came through to extend the ground stop to subsidiary airline Horizon Air, which operates another 45 planes.
The ground stop was initially due to last until midnight, but was extended several times as authorities grappled with the IT problem.
The order was finally lifted at 2am EST despite warnings of a moderate chance it would be extended once again.
Alaska Airlines admitted the ground stop would cause delays for travelers and have knock on effects into Monday.
‘At approximately 8 p.m. Pacific on Sunday, Alaska Airlines experienced an IT outage that’s impacting our operations,’ the airline said in a statement Sunday evening.
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Author: Ray Hilbrich
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