U.S. carrier Alaska Airlines said 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 Oct. 24 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 cyberattack.
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.
Philadelphia Indemnity Insurance Co., the insurer for Mount Prospect Academy and the Vermont Permanency Initiative, Inc. (VPI), maintains that only one of multiple policies it issued to them is triggered by the claims in the lawsuits. The insurer further maintains that this abusive conduct liability is in danger of being exhausted by defense costs before even one case goes to trial.
In the individual lawsuits against the service organizations, the plaintiffs allege they were mistreated as children while at the state’s Youth Detention Center (YDC) and/or at private contractor locations like those operated by Mount Prospect Academy and VPI, which provide educational, therapeutic, and residential services to children.
More than 1,300 people have sued the state since 2020 alleging that they were physically or sexually abused in state custody as children while under YDC care. Only one case has gone to trial, resulting in a $38 million verdict. Two other cases have been settled by the state for $10 million and $4.5 million.