Alaska’s 3rd Outage in 3 Months, Airlines' Cloud Reliance Cracks Again

Alaska Airlines has been hit by its third major IT glitch in just three months, this time caused by a worldwide outage of Microsoft Azure, the cloud platform that powers key systems for both Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines.

The disruption began when a configuration error in Azure Front Door, a global content delivery service, caused critical systems, including airlines’ websites and mobile apps, to go down. This directly impacted passengers trying to book flights or check in online.

The outage began around 9 AM Pacific Time on October 29 and lasted several hours before Microsoft deployed a recovery configuration. Despite the technical difficulties, flights continued to operate on schedule.

Alaska Airlines responded quickly by activating backup infrastructure to reduce disruptions and advised passengers unable to check in online to get help at airport counters and to arrive early to facilitate boarding.

This failure underscores the airlines' growing reliance on third-party cloud providers and the associated risks to their digital services.

Just days earlier, on October 20, 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a global outage caused by a critical error in its DynamoDB database, affecting many systems, including Delta Air Lines and United Airlines websites.

Photo by David Syphers on Unsplash