Alaska Airlines had to ground planes amid computer network outage

Alaska Airlines and its regional subsidiary Horizon Air requested a ground stop to all flights Sunday night due to a computer system outage.

The request to federal authorities kept Alaska and Horizon flights out of the air until the FAA said the stop was lifted after 2 a.m. ET. Monday.

In a statement earlier, Alaska said the outage involved its information technology network and was “impacting our operations.”

“We are experiencing issues with our IT systems. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to resolve the issues,” read a message on the airline’s website.

Even as the problem is now resolved, it could have a lasting effect and cause delays to the airlines’ schedules through Monday.

“There will be residual impacts to our operation throughout the evening,” Alaska said in its earlier statement.

Alaska and Horizon Air ticket holders were asked to check the statuses of their flights before they arrived at their departure points.

It was one year ago nearly to the day that the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike’s sensor configuration update to its widely used platform triggered a system crash that affected airlines, medical facilities, businesses and police forces around the globe, with Microsoft computers showing “blue screens of death.”

The exact cause of Sunday’s Alaska outage was not immediately clear.