Americans are being warned to expect travel disruptions today as Alaska Airlines had to unexpectedly ground its entire fleet for over three hours.
The prominent airline made a rare request to the US Federal Aviation Administration at 10:50 PM EST, asking to halt all primary flights throughout the United States due to a comprehensive IT system failure.
Alaska Airlines operates up to 238 planes, all Boeing models, with key hubs in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, 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.
Alaska Airlines has requested a ground stop for all mainline aircraft across the United States
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
‘We requested a temporary, system-wide ground stop for Alaska and Horizon Air flights until the issue is resolved.’
The airline has warned of ‘residual impacts to our operation throughout the evening’ amid concerns about widespread travel delays.
‘If you are traveling tonight, please check the status of your flight before leaving for the airport.
‘We apologize to our guests for this inconvenience.’
Alaska Airlines is America’s fifth largest airline and travels to 120 destinations across five countries.
It services about 44 million customers annually.
One passenger revealed he and his fiancé spent two hours waiting on a tarmac in Denver before the flight crew finally instructed them that the plane would not be taking off.
At 10.30pm, all passengers were instructed to disembark and await further instruction, he said.
The ground stop does not impact flights that are already in the air, but it does prevent any flights scheduled to take off within that window from doing so, sparking potential travel chaos with delays and queues
Alaska Airlines has issued a statement apologizing for the delay and explaining the reason for the ground stop
Another passenger, Riley Davis, said after two and a half hours on the tarmac, he still had no indication of when he would be free to deplane.
‘Since they cannot coordinate exact gates, they are manually assigning gates via radio communication,’ he revealed.
‘I would love to know when I can get some dinner, I’m starving.’
He was inundated with comments from other travelers who said they’d noticed tarmacs around the country blocked by Alaska Airlines planes which had nowhere to go.
The Alaska Airlines statement, shared to X at least two hours after the crisis began, has been swamped with confused and furious customers demanding answers as they await further instruction at airports across the nation.
‘My son, a minor flying accompanied, is stranded on one of your planes right now. I will never let him fly Alaska Airlines again,’ one furious mom wrote.
‘We’ve been sitting on the tarmac for over an hour and being told it’s going to be another hour of sitting here with stagnant air smelling gasoline. It’s 10:20pm people are tired, hungry, etc . This is not okay,’ another wrote.
A third added: ‘After a 6 hour flight, we’ve been sitting on the tarmac for over 2 hours.’
Passengers have reported being stuck on planes ‘for hours’ before they were ultimately instructed to deplane
The US Federal Aviation Administration updated its status page on Sunday with the extraordinary request
The FAA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
It comes weeks after a damning report revealed that major errors by Boeing led to a door plug flying off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max mid flight, putting the lives of 175 passengers and crew at risk.
The National Transportation Safety Board said a flawed manufacturing process within Boeing and insufficient regulatory oversight caused the near catastrophic disaster.
‘An accident like this only happens when there are multiple system failures,’ NTSB chairman Jennifer Homendy said.
The NTSB has been investigating what went so wrong just six minutes into the January 2024 flight from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California.
The initial probe found four key bolts that were meant to hold the door plug in place were were missing from the aircraft.
It has since been established the door left Boeing’s factory in Renton, Washington without those crucial bolts.
Just one of those bolts, if properly secured, would have held the door panel in place, and the other three were supposed to be used as an additional safety mechanism.
No fault was found with Alaska Airlines crew qualifications or preflight inspections.
The heroic actions of the crew of Alaska Airlines flight 1282 ensured everyone survived, Homendy found.
