SEATTLE — After two crippling IT outages this year, Alaska Airlines now says it is confident travelers won’t have to worry about tech problems interrupting their plans in the future.

While Alaska has some room to improve its tech systems, it does not have a “systemic” IT failure, Chief Financial Officer Shane Tackett said, citing a third-party review Alaska commissioned to study its IT infrastructure.

Alaska hired the consulting firm Accenture to look for ways to strengthen its system after an IT outage grounded its fleet for eight hours in October. That outage followed another hardware failure that grounded Alaska’s fleet for three hours in July.

The disruptions come amid a big year for Alaska, as it integrates Hawaiian Airlines after acquiring the company in 2024. This time last year, Alaska unveiled its long-term plan to capitalize on its acquisition and its newly inherited fleet of widebody planes, unveiling new Pacific routes and a goal to turn its Seattle hub into a global gateway.

Alaska said in a recent statement it is already seeing “meaningful progress” from its effort to integrate the two airlines. Company executives have said the IT outages are not related to its merger with Hawaiian.

Alaska did not share details on the scope of Accenture’s assessment, or what actions the company would take once the review was complete. Alaska has not released the initial results of that review but said in a statement it had “begun to implement recommendations.”

[How Alaska Airlines responds to wild weather, IT troubles and travel chaos]

Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference Thursday, Tackett said Accenture found there are some actions Alaska can take, what he called “hygiene.” The airline can improve resiliency and redundancy, and increase daily checks of its systems. But the review did not find a large, systemic failure.

“We were open-minded to ‘Are we missing something on the architecture side of it? Have we just underresourced ourselves?’” Tackett said. “That’s not what they found. A lot of the things that we’re hearing that we should be doing are pretty quick-win types of things.

“We fully expect to be stable and resilient. … People can have confidence that we’re not going to have infrastructure, data center-related interruptions in our operations at all, Tackett continued.

It was one of the first times Alaska executives have spoken publicly about the company’s finances and operations since the IT outage in October.

Alaska’s system went down on the same day it reported its third-quarter financial results, and the company canceled a scheduled earnings call the following day.

In that time period, Alaska also had to navigate a 43-day government shutdown and a resulting order from the Federal Aviation Administration for major carriers to reduce flights.

In a financial filing Wednesday, Alaska Air Group, which owns Horizon Air and Hawaiian Airlines as well as its namesake carrier, said it would take a financial hit from the turbulent start to its fourth quarter, three months that include the recent IT outage, the government shutdown and a fire at a California refinery that is a major source of jet fuel for West Coast carriers. The airline lowered its expected earnings from 40 cents to 10 cents.

The government shutdown and resulting flight cancellations cost the airline about $30 million, Alaska said in its Wednesday statement. The October IT outage, as well as a Microsoft Azure cloud outage that impacted Alaska’s systems that same month, cost the airline $50 million.

But the airline is getting back on track, Tackett told analysts at the Goldman Sachs conference.

[Alaska Airlines to open new pilot base in San Diego and plans to hire hundreds]

West Coast jet fuel prices are back in line with other markets, Tackett said. Bookings and revenue have not fully returned to preshutdown levels, but they are still “better than 95% of the days we’ve observed this year,” he said.

“I don’t think the impacts are likely to linger into next year,” Tackett added.

Analysts from JP Morgan agreed that the events of the last few months wouldn’t impact the airline’s performance next year, except for the constant threat of volatile fuel prices. But in a note to investors summing up their reaction to Alaska’s recent financial disclosures, the analysts wrote, “a miss is a miss.”

A bumpy few months

A few weeks into the government shutdown, the FAA ordered major carriers to reduce operations at 40 airports across the country, an effort to ease the strain on air traffic controllers who had spent weeks working without pay and were starting to miss shifts in high volumes.

Alaska Air Group canceled about 600 flights during that period, impacting 40,000 travelers, the airline said in the Wednesday financial filing. Revenue has “not fully recovered to pre-shutdown trends,” the filing read.

Tackett clarified Thursday at the conference that the airline was more bullish than its filing may have led analysts to believe.

Before the mandated flight reductions, Alaska had been recovering from a drop-off in domestic bookings earlier this year, Tackett said. Bookings had “started to creep their way back up” to match the level of demand Alaska saw at the end of 2024 and into 2025.

“Then, like everybody else, bookings hollowed out,” he said.

Once the government reopened and the FAA reversed course on its directive, bookings bounced back quickly.

Delta Air Lines — the second-largest carrier at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, after Alaska — said Wednesday it lost $200 million from the government shutdown, contributing to a quarterly loss of 25 cents in earnings per share.

Savanthi Syth, an airline analyst with financial services company Raymond James, estimated immediately after Alaska’s IT outage that it would trim about 15 cents from Alaska’s earnings per share, or about $26 million from its pretax income for the fourth quarter.

Alaska’s estimate Wednesday calculated a higher impact, estimating a loss of 25 cents in earnings per share. The government shutdown and higher fuel prices each trimmed 15 cents in earnings per share, Alaska said.

[Airline that planned to fly Alaskans to Asia shuts down]

The IT failures were not related to Alaska’s recent acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines and resulting changes to integrate the two airlines’ systems, Tackett emphasized.

But he did acknowledge that Alaska’s IT teams are “spread, maybe, a tiny bit thin,” as they work on integrating the platforms and other changes Alaska has introduced this year, including a joint loyalty program and a new premium credit card.

On the refinery front, Tackett said the airline is paying less for fuel today than it was before the fire, even though the refinery is not yet back online.

Still, he acknowledged the industry needed a long-term solution to make fuel prices “less volatile” on the West Coast. That could mean bringing more oil on ships from Asia directly to Seattle or Portland, which, in turn, would require local political buy-in.

“It’s not a novel idea,” Tackett said. “We just have to execute it up in Seattle.”

The fate of Hawaiian’s A321s

At the Goldman Sachs conference, Tackett also shed light on Alaska’s thinking about its aircraft fleet, which now includes a mix of planes from Boeing and its European competitor Airbus.

The last time Alaska had a mixed fleet — when it acquired Virgin America in 2016 — it shed the inherited Airbus planes because it was cheaper and more efficient to operate aircraft from just one manufacturer.

Tackett said the airline has that same thinking today about its narrowbody fleet, which includes Boeing’s 737 MAX and Hawaiian’s fleet of 17 in-service Airbus A321s. But Alaska hasn’t yet decided what it will do.

“There really isn’t a reason in our mind to have two pieces of equipment that do the same thing; if you can get one, it has much better economics,” Tackett said. “The number of A321s we have is too few — you need double that number or zero.”

On the widebody front, Alaska plans to keep operating both manufacturers “as far as we can see into the future,” Tackett said.

Alaska doesn’t have the same cost concerns as it would with its narrowbodies because it will operate the widebody A330s out of Hawaiian’s Honolulu headquarters, where the airline already has the right equipment for service and maintenance, and pilots and flight crews are already trained on operating that model.

Alaska is “extending leases and buying out of leases” for the A330, Tackett continued, and has the option to buy five more Boeing 787 widebody planes.

With Hawaiian’s Airbus fleet now in its fold, Alaska also has to deal with any Airbus challenges. On Thursday, Tackett acknowledged that the airline may “have to go down a couple lines of flying” due to an issue with the Pratt and Whitney engine on the A321.

Hawaiian’s operations were not affected by a recent software issue on Airbus’ A320 family, the airline said last week.

WASHINGTON (KTUU) – Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, warned Wednesday that Alaska faces some of the “most extremes of the extremes” when it comes to skyrocketing healthcare costs. Nearly 28,000 Alaskans could see their insurance premiums spike by as much as 295% if Congress fails to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies by the end of the month.

“My home state of Alaska appears to suffer some of the most extremes of the extremes when we’re talking about these high costs,” Murkowski said at the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Wednesday. “People are expecting us to come up with a solution.”

The warning comes as Alaska ranks among the hardest-hit states in the nation for premium increases, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, after the crisis was highlighted during the 43-day government shutdown—the longest in U.S. history—that ended in November when eight Senate Democrats broke ranks to reopen the government.

As part of that deal, Republicans promised a vote on extending the enhanced premium tax credits by the middle of December. Alaska’s senators say they’re still working on extensions, but they only have until December 31.

Senate Democrats will be forcing a vote next week on a plan to extend enhanced premium tax credits, or the subsidies in question, for three years, NBC’s Sahil Kapur reports.

“Republicans have one week to decide where they stand: Vote for this bill and bring health care costs down, or block this bill and send premiums skyrocketing,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said on the Senate floor Thursday. “That’s what’s at stake when we vote next week. It’s going to be one of the most important votes we take.”

Across the aisle, though, its chances to survive a filibuster seem unlikely.

“I haven’t seen yet what the Dems are proposing. I don’t think we’re close to a 60-vote threshold yet,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, told NBC News on Tuesday.

In a statement to Alaska’s News Source, Murkowski, too, said she was dubious of its chances in the chamber.

“We have two problems in front of us that we need to resolve: the immediate spike in premiums Alaskans will face if we do not allow for some limited extension before the end of this year, and the need to address the ever-escalating cost of receiving basic health care,” she said.

“These are policy considerations that will take us more than a week to resolve. I’ve been working to bring my colleagues to the table to develop both short- and long-term solutions before Alaskans feel the impact of these premium increases in the new year.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said at an Anchorage Chamber of Commerce forum in November he supports “tapering down” the subsidies over time rather than an abrupt end.

“Senator Sullivan is working relentlessly with his Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle to extend ACA subsidies with necessary reforms before the end of the year,” spokesperson Amanda Coyne told Alaska’s News Source Thursday. “Senator Sullivan recognizes that because of the high cost of health care delivery in Alaska, thousands of small business owners, fishermen, entrepreneurs, and others across the state rely on those subsidies.”

Coyne did not say whether Sullivan supports the Democrats’ three-year extension plan.

All the while, President Donald Trump has backed a plan to send funding to individuals instead of insurance companies.

“THE ONLY HEALTHCARE I WILL SUPPORT OR APPROVE IS SENDING THE MONEY DIRECTLY BACK TO THE PEOPLE, WITH NOTHING GOING TO THE BIG, FAT, RICH INSURANCE COMPANIES, WHO HAVE MADE $TRILLIONS, AND RIPPED OFF AMERICA LONG ENOUGH,” Trump said in a social media post last week. “Congress, do not waste your time and energy on anything else.”

That plan, touted by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, proposes individuals receive credits, “directly to patients and empower them to manage their own health care decisions,” according to a press release from his office.

Alaska’s News Source contacted the entire delegation for comment Thursday. A spokesperson for Begich did not respond to multiple requests over several days.

Alaska impact

Healthcare premiums for about 28,000 Alaskans, roughly 4% of the state, could skyrocket if the subsidies expire, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Alaska’s Division of Insurance.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, told CNN Wednesday Alaska would be one of ten states hardest hit by the funding cut.

“We’re talking about tens of millions of people, including in many red states across the country,” Jeffries said. “In fact, the states that will be most impacted if the Affordable Care Act tax credits expire, are Republican run states. We’re talking about West Virginia, Wyoming, Alaska…”

Alaska’s News Source reached out to Jeffries’s office for specifics on his claim, though the request was made after his office hours in D.C.

Jeffries statements align with data from a Nov. 24 study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, showing that in many cases, Alaska, on average, has some of the highest percentage increases to how much premiums will cost if the subsidies expire.

The study shows 60-year-old Alaskans earning just above 401% of the federal poverty line ($78,396 annually) could see their premiums increase by 295%. The average premium without these subsidies would become $2,192 monthly, consuming 34% of their yearly income.

In this age and income group, Alaska is the fourth highest increase, the first being Wyoming at 421%, West Virginia at 413% and Connecticut at 316%.

“I think we’re going to need to have a short-term extension‚” Murkowski said at the Wednesday committee meeting. “But I think we can put reasonable caps on it … But we’ve got to be looking longer term to how do we ultimately reduce these costs of care.”

The enhanced premium tax credits, which provide more generous subsidies than the original Affordable Care Act and extend eligibility, began during the pandemic and were extended in 2022. They are set to expire at the end of 2025 if Congress does not extend them again.

The subsidies were at the core of the recent 43-day government shutdown, with Senate Democrats forcing the closure to try and extend the credits. Alaska’s entire congressional delegation has publicly said they support extending the subsidies.

See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com

Copyright 2025 KTUU. All rights reserved.

This year, Alaska celebrates 70 years since our state constitution was created. And yet the official state seal that was adopted then fails to acknowledge Alaska’s Indigenous identities and all of our state’s resources.

State seals are official symbols used to visually represent a state by featuring images and text meant to resonate with the history, values and identity of the state.

Every time you cast a ballot, or every time an official law or proclamation is issued, the Alaska state seal is on that document. The lieutenant governor is responsible for the official use of the seal. It is found on the walls of the state capitol and legislative offices, but sometimes it seems to be hidden in plain sight.

After Alaska was purchased from Russia, Alaska’s seal featured Indigenous figures fishing and harvesting marine mammals.

And yet in 1910, the territorial governor redesigned the seal, erasing the Alaska Native representation and shifting focus to Alaska’s mining, timber, seafood and agriculture resources.

This is the same seal that represents Alaska today. Fun fact: The mining resource on the seal is represented by a smoking ore smelter. But the only smelter in Alaska is the symbol on the state seal; all mined ore is shipped to smelters Outside.

Indigenous people were the first people and deserve to be acknowledged on the seal. Native cultural symbols and art make up some of the most recognizable and significant visual imagery in our state.

Additionally, 2027 will mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the trans-Alaska pipeline. Oil production has revolutionized Alaska’s economic and sociocultural landscape, bringing over $300 billion in revenue to the state since the pipeline opened.

The current official seal has elements representing the state’s bounty of resources. But Alaska’s oil, the biggest resource bounty for the past 50 years, is not. It should be represented on the seal.

Benny Benson designed Alaska’s flag as part of a territory-wide competition for students in 1927. His new flag represented hope for the future of our beautiful land. Like the flag, our state seal should represent all the people in the state, and Alaska’s past, present and dreams of its future.

To policymakers, educators and tribal leaders: With the 70th anniversary of statehood coming in 2029, maybe it’s time we have another state competition. This time, it will be for our seal.

Dave Norton is an engineer from Anchorage. He is a board member of the Alaska Oil & Gas Historical Society.

• • •

[Related: Anchorage Assembly reveals options for new city seal with Dena’ina designs]

• • •

The Anchorage Daily News welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.