The American airline Alaska Airlines announced the suspension of all its flights, as well as those of its subsidiary Horizon Air, due to a computer failure on Sunday evening.
The airline told AFP until Sunday, it “underwent a computer failure affecting its operations” and that it “requested a temporary interruption, on the scale of the whole system, of all the flights of Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air until the problem is solved”.
Alaska Airlines did not specify the exact nature of this failure. The company’s website has been disturbed since about 3:00 am GMT on Monday, according to specialized sites.
“We apologize to our customers for this inconvenience,” the company said in a statement. “There will be residual impacts on our operations throughout the evening”.
The declaration, also published on X, aroused negative reactions from apparently frustrated passengers. “It’s brutal. It’s been two hours since we sit at the airport,” replied an X user named Caleb Heimlich.
Another user, Betterdays, commented: “It started at 8 pm and you only publish that now! Your service has deteriorated considerably in the past five years”.
This incident occurs more than a year after a Bouchon – Opecule holder sentenced a redundant rescue outcome – of a newly delivered Boeing 737 Max 9 was detached during a flight from Alaska Airlines between Portland (Oregon) and Ontario (California) in January 2024.
The 171 passengers and the six crew members survived rapid decompression, but the incident led the American civil aviation regulator (FAA) to nail on the ground many Boeing 737-9 operated by American airlines.
Last month, US investigators said Boeing’s inability to provide adequate training to manufacturing staff was a determining factor in the almost catastrophic flight explosion of the Alaska Airlines aircraft.
Based in Seattle, Alaska Airlines is the fifth largest airline in the United States since its takeover of Hawaiian Airlines last year.
The two companies have a fleet of more than 360 planes which serve around 140 destinations, mainly in the west of the United States and in the Hawaii archipelago.
Posted on July 21 at 8:31 a.m., AFP