SEATTLE – Alaska Airlines and its Horizon Air affiliate canceled dozens of flights Saturday after their computer system failed.
Technicians were installing a back-up power supply system and a transformer blew, which took out the entire central computer system, Alaska spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said.
"We've had rolling delays throughout the day, we've had to cancel 15 percent of our flights," said Egan.
The two airlines canceled more than 90 flights across the network, Egan said.
The system went down at about 3 a.m. By noon, some systems were back up but technicians continued to work to get everything back online.
“We’re working to get our operation back to normal as quickly as possible and are very sorry for the inconvenience to our customers,” Alaska Airlines President Brad Tilden said. “We are doing all we can to book (passengers) on other flights.”
Twenty of Alaska Airlines’ 58 canceled flights were departing Seattle while another 10 were flying in the state of Alaska. The remaining cancellations affected departures throughout the airline’s route system, including six in Southern California, five in Portland and four in the Bay Area. Horizon has canceled 81 flights so far today, including 30 departing from Seattle, 13 in Portland and eight in Spokane.
The airline asked passengers to check their flight status before going to the airport by visiting the website https://www.alaskaair.com/airport/flightstatus/flightstatus.aspx or calling 1-800-ALASKAAIR (1-800-252-7522). If you go online, be warned that there's no guarantee that the information is accurate because the problem was affecting the website.
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