Alaska Airlines experienced its third significant information technology breakdown in three months Wednesday, this time linked to a worldwide Microsoft Azure cloud platform disruption.
The Seattle-based carrier announced that multiple Alaska and Hawaiian airlines services depend on the platform, creating “a disruption to key systems, including our websites,” according to a social media statement Wednesday morning.
Major corporations including Kroger, Costco and Starbucks also experienced disruptions from the worldwide outage.
Microsoft representatives indicated problems began around 9 a.m. Pacific Time.
“We have confirmed that an inadvertent configuration change was the trigger event for this issue,” the technology company stated online. “We initiated the deployment of our ‘last known good’ configuration, which has now successfully been completed. Customers may have begun to see initial signs of recovery.”
A Microsoft spokesperson indicated they expected complete resolution within four hours. “We are working to address an issue affecting Azure Front Door that is impacting the availability of some services. Customers should continue to check their Service Health Alerts, and the latest update on this issue can be found on the Azure status page.”
“In coordination with our technology partners, our teams are actively working to restore services as quickly as possible,” Alaska stated.
The Alaska Airlines website initially displayed jumbled and unusable content. Shortly afterward, only an error message appeared. The alaskaair.com address currently redirects to a page where users can book flights or manage trips, though additional options remain unavailable.
The Hawaiian Airlines website redirects to a page offering booking, check-in, flight status verification, or trip management options.
The airline informed passengers unable to check in online that they must visit airport agents to obtain boarding passes. Travelers should anticipate additional lobby wait times.
“I just keep refreshing the app hoping I can go print out over there, but it’s just saying error, error and the agent said the app is down, so we all have to wait for our boarding pass and to check our bags,” one frustrated traveler at Sea-Tac airport said Wednesday afternoon.
“Nothing’s working, even their apps aren’t working, none of the employees iPads aren’t working, they can’t help us out, so they can just talk to us about things, but we’re not getting anywhere,” another traveler said.
Alaska’s previous information technology disruption occurred Thursday, October 24.
During that incident, the airline grounded all flights nationwide, stranding travelers at airports including Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
On Friday, October 25, the airline reported 400 flight cancellations resulting from the failure, which persisted for 8 hours.
Alaska stated 49,000 passengers experienced disruptions.
Passengers described waiting in Sea-Tac lines or phone queues for hours seeking rebooking.
Following that failure, the carrier admitted its recent operational performance fell below acceptable standards. Alaska now confronts another system collapse with no confirmed restoration timeline.
The third information technology breakdown in three months raises questions about Alaska Airlines’ technology infrastructure resilience, with the repeated failures suggesting either inadequate redundancy planning or fundamental architectural problems requiring comprehensive system redesign.
The Microsoft Azure dependency creates single point of failure vulnerability where Alaska’s critical operations rely entirely on external cloud provider whose outages immediately disable airline functions, unlike competitors maintaining hybrid infrastructure with on-premises backup systems.
The Hawaiian Airlines merger integration complicating Alaska’s technology environment, with two formerly independent airlines now sharing infrastructure that multiplies failure impacts across both carriers’ operations rather than isolating problems to individual brands.
The 9 a.m. Pacific disruption timing maximizing passenger inconvenience during morning check-in peak hours when business travelers and families prepare for early flights, with the outage catching thousands mid-process without boarding passes or baggage tags.
The inadvertent Microsoft configuration change indicating routine maintenance activities triggered cascading failures, with the incident demonstrating how minor adjustments to complex cloud systems can inadvertently break mission-critical services for enterprise customers.
The four-hour Microsoft restoration estimate providing frustrated passengers uncertain timeframe for service recovery, though cloud infrastructure complexity makes such predictions unreliable as unforeseen complications frequently extend outages beyond initial projections.
The jumbled website followed by complete error messages illustrating progressive system degradation where partial functionality collapsed entirely before restoration to minimal capability, with the progression suggesting Alaska’s redundancy systems failed to maintain basic operations during the Azure outage.
The manual airport check-in requirement reverting operations to pre-digital-era processes where gate agents manually issue boarding passes and tag luggage, with the throwback procedures overwhelming staff trained to handle exceptions rather than processing entire passenger loads manually.
The employee iPad failures disabling agents’ ability to assist passengers demonstrates how thoroughly Alaska’s operations depend on cloud connectivity, with even frontline staff lacking offline capabilities to perform basic ticketing and rebooking functions.
The October 24 outage occurring “just last week” compressing the timeline between failures, with barely a week separating major incidents suggesting Alaska hasn’t resolved underlying problems before new crises emerge.
The 400 canceled flights affecting 49,000 passengers quantifying the October incident’s scope, with the metrics revealing how brief technology failures cascade into day-long disruptions as airlines struggle to reposition aircraft and crews after system restoration.
The nationwide grounding during October representing Alaska’s most severe operational response, with the complete halt indicating safety-critical systems failed rather than just passenger-facing applications, potentially triggering Federal Aviation Administration intervention.
The hours-long Sea-Tac rebooking waits and phone queue delays overwhelming Alaska’s customer service capacity, with the manual processing bottleneck demonstrating the airline lacks sufficient agents to handle crisis-level demand when automation fails.
The carrier’s “unacceptable performance” admission following October establishing management’s awareness of reliability crisis, though the acknowledgment proves meaningless when subsequent failures demonstrate no corrective actions prevented recurrence.
The absent restoration timeline for Wednesday’s incident creating uncertainty worse than defined delays, with passengers unable to make informed decisions about alternative travel arrangements when the airline cannot estimate when normal operations resume.
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport bearing disproportionate Alaska Airlines disruption impact given the carrier’s hub status, with Sea-Tac experiencing concentrated delays and cancellations affecting thousands of Pacific Northwest residents and connecting passengers.
The competitive threat to Alaska’s market position emerging as reliability-conscious travelers potentially shift bookings to Delta, United, or Southwest whose technology infrastructure hasn’t experienced comparable repeated failures in recent months.
