NOTN- Alaska Airlines will be bringing in outside experts to review it’s IT system after a second major outage in four months occurred last week.

Last Thursday’s system failure halted operations for about eight hours, cancelling flights and affecting nearly 50,000 passengers.

As of Saturday October 25, the airline released the following statement;

“We have increased guest care staffing to support higher volumes but recognize that wait times have been frustratingly long.  

We know our guests put their trust in us when they choose to fly with Alaska, and this level of performance is not acceptable. And while safety is our most critical responsibility, the reliability of our operations is an essential expectation of our guests.  

Following a similar disruption earlier this year, we took action to harden our 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.   

The reliability of our technology is fundamental to our ability to serve guests and get them to where they need to be. As we expand and execute the plan to ensure our systems are sufficiently resilient, we will continue to share updates on our progress.”

A similar outage in the summer caused days of flight disruptions.