Tuesday has seen the 
Alaska Airlines app and website go temporarily down, which resulted in thousands of passengers being unable to log in and view or book travel plans. The platforms simply displayed a message after entering credentials, asking guests to come back and retry in a few minutes.
The airline quickly published a statement first published by the Seattle Times, that it was experiencing issues that limited access to the website and app, and its team was proactively working on a fix. This becomes the fourth time the airline’s IT systems have faced headwinds.
‘Please Retry After A Few Minutes’
On Tuesday morning, guests visiting the Alaska Airlines website and app were greeted with an error message once they had entered their log in cridentials. This noted “It seems this application has become very popular, and its available rate limit has been reached. Please retry after a few minutes.” The airline noted that the platforms were experiencing an issue that was intermittently impacting the ability to log in to customer accounts on the app or website platforms.
This, as a result, meant confirmed passengers were unable to check in online, and if they did not have their boarding pass already printed or available via their device, they were forced to check in at the airport. The airline, as a result, encourages all passengers to arrive with sufficient time to check in when they arrived to the airport terminal. Simple Flying reached out to Alaska Airlines for a statement and received the following:
“We’re currently experiencing an issue that is intermittently impacting the ability for our guests to log into their accounts on the app and website. Our teams are actively working on implementing a fix. We encourage guests who are traveling today who do not already have their boarding pass downloaded to arrive with enough time to print a boarding pass at the airport. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope to have this resolved soon.”
Fourth Outage In The Past 6 Months
Unfortunately for Alaska Airlines, this outage becomes the fourth in the last year, following July’s hardware failure that saw Alaska data centers force the grounding of planes for up to three hours, which affected thousands of passengers and forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights across the carrier’s North American network.
October saw another separate IT issue, which grounded the airline’s fleet for approximately eight hours, and then, subsequently, a Microsoft Azure cloud outage affected the airline’s mobile app and website platforms — along with many other airlines. Since then, Alaska has contracted Accenture, a third-party consulting firm, to review the airline’s IT infrastructure.
Airlines rely on efficient software systems to handle several critical aspects of their operation, from managing flight schedules and real-time data to optimizing routes for efficiency and calculating fuel savings. This, along with the ability to book travel on various platforms, allows users to check in for flights, among other tasks.
Over $40 Million: Analysts Say Alaska Airlines’ IT Outages Could Have Costly Consequences
Less than a week after an IT outage grounded the carrier’s fleet, another IT outage has happened.
Airline System Meltdowns
While each incident can be slightly different, an IT Outage can bring carriers to their knees. The backbone of an airline’s ecosystem can be immensely fragile.
In July, Alaska blamed its IT outage on the failure of hardware in one of its data centers. This was compounded by its second outage in October, which collectively affected hundreds of flights and displaced over 50,000 passengers. This not only saw the airlines’ operations thrown into disarray, but also saw passengers forced to abandon their travel plans.
If an airline system goes down, it is not as simple as turning it back on again. Many systems take time to get back up and running to full capacity, and the effects can linger for days as backlogs of travelers are rebooked. Alaska Airlines is not alone in these challenges, with other notable incidents affecting Southwest and Delta Air Lines.
