Alaska Airlines' statement on IT outage
30 comments
·October 24, 2025tschwimmer
croemer
For flights departing or arriving in the EU you get fairly nice compensation for significant delays (3+ hours) between 250 EUR (<1500km) and 600 EUR (>=1500km). Helps ensure incentives align beyond reputation.
tschwimmer
Tell me about it. Swiss air refuses to pay out 1800€ in EC261 compensation…
ohdeardear
Air travel sucks. [..] I’m sure next time I can take my business to a different airline who will also be happy to not do any better.
I think politically, everyone would want airlines to have working IT-systems and they would probably want to pay $100 (rationally, closer to $1000) amortized over 50 years to pay for that, but apparently humanity is just too stupid to make it work. (I am not the problem in this, because I try to be politically active when I have time, but humanity is just so fucking stupid that it's not even funny; I guess someone should invent an anti-lead; something to put in the water supply to add 30 IQ points, but that would probably be punishable by death, because no good deed goes unpunished in this hell scape.)
Nextgrid
> they would probably want to pay $100 (rationally, closer to $1000) amortized over 50 years to pay for that
Which would just flow into the pockets of ClownStrike or some big consultancy and nothing would actually change.
lpapez
> I think politically, everyone would want airlines to have working IT-systems and they would probably want to pay $100 (rationally, closer to $1000) amortized over 50 years to pay for that, but apparently humanity is just too stupid to make it work.
Not stupid, just corrupt :)
If we did this, the money would get misappropriated or stolen - most likely completely legally through overpaid consulting fees.
So clearly we should pay someone to prevent that from happening.
Wait a minute...
thaumasiotes
> someone should invent an anti-lead; something to put in the water supply to add 30 IQ points, but that would probably be punishable by death
Why do you think we add iodine to salt?
chroncueow
[flagged]
anonymous908213
Travel insurance is -EV. For the average person who uses it, they will spend more than they recoup. Otherwise the insuring company holding their policy would, you know, not be in business. I don't think there's very much skill in opting in to a -EV bet. The purpose of insurance is to avoid catastrophic losses, which is not a factor in this anecdote.
jherskovic
I was affected as well. My IAH->SEA 7:10 PM Central flight took off 4 hours late. It’s 4 AM central and we’re just descending to land in Seattle. Communication from the airline was basically nonexistent and the poor ground crews didn’t get any information either. I thought we wouldn’t even take off because of crew time limits, but we were lucky to have a fresh one. The system apparently came back and died several times before we could take off. We pushed away from the gate because the system was working and then had to wait on the tarmac for an hour because the system was down again. Not a fun day for air travelers.
consumer451
For reporting from people who were stuck on tarmacs across the PNW see:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1oejonu/system_wid...
Hilift
No details? I say we assume it was an expired certificate outage.
sans_souse
How exactly does an IT outage occur yet not be linked to any "other events?"
Can we really use the phrase "IT outage" as if it's an explaination in and of itself?
abnercoimbre
"As a result of the IT outage, if you are an affected passenger, we are:
- providing hotel accommodations;
- arranging for ground transportation;
- providing meal vouchers; and
- arranging for air transportation on another air carrier or foreign air carrier to the passenger’s destination; as appropriate, based on your circumstances."
jabiko
That's not what's written on the webpage. If your post is meant as a critique that they’re not offering those services, you should make that clear to avoid spreading misinformation.
galaxy_gas
https://www.alaskaair.com/content/advisories/travel-advisori... It is on top of the page and linked a in it
jabiko
Ah, okay. I did a Google search for that phrase before posting my comment, but couldn't find any result. Probably its not indexed yet. Thanks for the clarification.
Still I think it would have been better for OP to link to the source to avoid exactly this confusion.
null
strotter
The last sentence on the statement page contains a link to a "flexible travel policy" page, which contains the above quoted text.
zkmon
Was there any impact on the flights in air?
isatis
Several reported having to be diverted, and I think in one case a flight that left JFK had to return to JFK while over the midwest: https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/ASA31
thaumasiotes
> Several reported having to be diverted
How does that work? What is it about a computer outage in your parent company that affects whether you're able to make an already-scheduled landing?
rkomorn
I'm guessing any/some/all of:
- Whether parent company has the capacity to service your plane at the landing location
- Whether parent company has the capacity to handle boarding new passengers for the next flight at landing location
- Whether parent company can get next flight off the ground from landing location
- "Risk" management by sending planes and passengers where parent company thinks it has better ability to recover to normal operations
- And probably a bunch more only people who work in that industry would think of
ralph84
No flights were departing their gates in SEA so presumably it was turned around to avoid gridlock at SEA due to no gates available.
ohdeardear
[dead]
I was affected. Taking off now for a 5:30pm PT flight to Seattle. Aside from clearly not having an appropriate disaster readiness plan, communication was bad even though some information was readily available. For example, there was an inbound ground stop for KSEA for hours, but it was never announced to passengers. We were very lucky the crew was fresh, and there was no discussion of when they would time out. I happened to find out that the crew had lots of time left so I decided to stay but at least a dozen people gave up and left.
Air travel sucks. I wasted 8 hours today and I won’t even get a lousy T shirt. I’m sure next time I can take my business to a different airline who will also be happy to not do any better.