No passenger wants to get trapped in the middle of an airline technical outage. It can leave passengers stranded on meltdown aircraft or falls down into the terminals for hours as hundreds. Flights are canceled And the airline operation comes at a scary stop.
Unfortunately, it appears that Airlines are experiencing IT system outage on a more consistent basis. “As the airline operations and pricing become rapidly complicated, the airline IT failures are up to increasing frequency and more technical range,” Travelers UnitedA consumer advocacy group. “Complex airline system [are] In recent years, the airline competition has been reduced together with bits and pieces of separate airlines as merger. ,
Many airlines including American, Delta, Southwest, United and British Airways have faced IT system failures in recent years. The most severe bunch was due to one Crowdastric issue in 2024Leading for thousands of canceled flights worldwide. While one affected several major airlines in the US, the other is isolated to the other specific carriers: Alaska Airlines experienced “an important IT outage” on July 20, 2025, resulting in a system-wide ground stop of flights to both Alaska and its regional assistant horizon. The airline said, “An important piece of multi-prone hardware at our data centers manufactured by third party, experienced an unexpected failure,” the airline said. statement“When this happened, it impressed many of our major systems that enable us to run various operations, requiring the implementation of ground stops to keep the aircraft in position.”
Although Aviation security Never compromised, Alaska’s outage canceled over 150 flights. The airline said on Monday, July 21, “There is a possibility of additional flight disruptions as we replicate the aircraft and crew in our network.” Flexible travel policy Want to change or cancel the flights prescribed through July 23.
Often, these types of technical failures affect the crew management software such as systems, which is a major component of flight operations. Such systems include “a lot of dimensions for the factor, including the passage of time, individual flight crew members, with the rules that control their working hours, route, aircraft and the location of all the people and aircraft,” Mike Arnote, and the founder of the Aviation Communications firm. Juliet alpha“However, sometimes it is so bad, out of the situation with planes and people, a large number of flights need to be canceled to reset. They just have to take strict action to reset the entire operation and bring the aircraft and people into a position to resume.”
As a result, it may take several days for the airline to recover from an IT outage with these lines. What do you know here whether you are caught in the middle of one – and how to get compensation for significant delays and cancellations.
How to get fast help from customer service
It is no surprise that this recession in an airline, representatives get overwhelmed quickly. “When you need help during a major airline incident, the biggest challenge is reaching someone,” Gary Lef says, ” A travel advisor And author of aviation blog Watch from wing“The phone lines are overloaded. Often the website and mobile app will crash because a lot of customers want help.”
