UPDATE: Alaska Airlines resumes flights, but Friday flight cancellations mount

After a seven-hour disruption that grounded planes across its entire network, Alaska Airlines said it restored its operations late Thursday after a “significant IT outage.”

But flight cancellations were already piling up for Friday.

And the Seattle-based carrier warned, overnight, that additional flight disruptions were likely still to come as it recovered from the disruption that affected its entire network. The carrier issued a flexible travel waiver to flyers willing to change their travel plans.

A ‘significant’ IT outage

Alaska initially requested a nationwide ground stop for its flights around 7:21 p.m. EDT (4:21 p.m. PDT) on Thursday, citing a tech outage that had affected its operations.

The disruption affected both Alaska’s mainline operation and its flights operated by regional subsidiary Horizon Air — but not Hawaiian Airlines, run by the same parent company as Alaska.

The ground stop led to mass flight delays and cancellations at the fifth-largest U.S. airline, and saw passengers stranded at airports across the country — especially Alaska’s major West Coast hubs, from Seattle to Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

All told, Alaska’s outage led to some 229 flight cancellations, the airline said. That was on top of hundreds of additional delays. Alaska’s Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) home base was most heavily affected, with more than 10% of all departures canceled Thursday, per FlightAware.

More travel woes expected Friday

Alaska was able to resume service around 2:30 a.m. EDT (11:30 p.m. PDT), the airline reported — while cautioning that additional disruptions were likely as it repositioned aircraft after halting its departures for seven-plus hours.

By 4:30 a.m. EDT Friday, Alaska had preemptively canceled close to 100 flights for Friday, according to data from FlightAware, at least 12% of its network.

That number could grow on Friday as the airline gets its flight operations back on track.

“We appreciate the patience of our guests whose travel plans have been disrupted,” Alaska said in a statement. “We’re working to get them to their destinations as quickly as we can. Before heading to the airport, we encourage flyers to check their flight status.”

What to do if your flight is canceled or delayed

Late Thursday, Alaska issued a travel waiver to allow passengers additional flexibility to change or cancel their flight. The advisory covered flights with an original travel date of Thursday or Friday, and allowed rebooking to any day between Thursday and Monday.

Passengers who encounter flight cancellations and major delays are entitled to a refund under U.S. Department of Transportation policies — that is, if they ultimately choose not to fly with the airline instead of accepting rebooking.

However, Alaska has also made a range of guarantees for passenger accommodations when there’s a major flight disruption within the airline’s control. Generally, a tech outage falls under that category. Those details can be found on the DOT’s FlightRights.gov dashboard.

In the wake of Thursday night’s outage, Alaska Air Group also postponed its third-quarter earnings call that had been planned for Friday.

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