Three is the magic number for Alaska Airlines: triple redundancy
(2026/01/26)
- Reference: 1769441701
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/01/26/three_is_the_magic_number/
- Source link:
Alaska Air's CEO says IT outages last year damaged the company on multiple fronts despite "triple redundancies" built into its disaster recovery plan.
The airline's systems failed twice in 2025 - once in [1]July and again in [2]October - forcing Alaska to ground its fleet on both occasions. Tech failures led to hundreds of flight cancellations.
Airbus to migrate critical apps to a sovereign Euro cloud [3]READ MORE
On a conference call with analysts at the end of last week, CEO Benito Minicucci addressed what the company learned from its IT audit and how it plans to prevent future outages.
"The two outages we experienced last year were painful for our guests, employees and financial results," he said. "It's not for a lack of investment. We were investing in IT. I think it was more of a configuration. We had hardware failures. We had backup systems and triple redundancies that didn't kick in."
A failure at Alaska's primary datacenter in October knocked out operational systems and grounded planes, it said at the time.
[4]
The airline has now brought in third-party experts to "really understand how to take this investment we're making... to really address the configuration of our infrastructure so that we stay resilient to a high degree."
[5]
[6]
"Corrective actions are underway and will continue throughout the year, supported by third-party experts as we invest in both near-term fixes and long-term sustainable solutions," Minicucci said.
The outages carried financial consequences. Passenger revenue rose just 2 percent year-over-year in [7]Q4 to $3.25 billion , while net income dropped to $20 million from $71 million a year earlier.
[8]Europe's cloud challenge: Building an Airbus for the digital age
[9]Trump spectrum sale leaves airlines with $4.5B bill for altimeter do-over
[10]Concorde at 50: Twice the speed of sound, twice the economic trouble
[11]Microsoft 365 outage drags on for nearly 10 hours during bad night for North American infra
[12]Major AWS outage across US-East region breaks half the internet
Minicucci said that financial results were "impacted by the IT outage, elevated fuel costs and the impact from government shutdowns."
Alaska's longer-term plans may include migrating to cloud computing. "If there's migration to the cloud and stuff, we'll get you guys up to speed on what we're doing," he told analysts.
[13]
Phew. Thank goodness the cloud never goes down. Maybe Alaska Airline should be safe and work with three providers. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/alaska_airlines_it_incident_grounding/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/24/alaska_airlines_calls_a_ground/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/19/airbus_sovereign_cloud/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aXedxhS2mA8mNB1FVvC3bgAAAoA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[7] https://news.alaskaair.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Alaska-Air-Group-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2025-results.pdf
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/29/europes_cloud_challenge_building_an/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/08/airlines_face_another_altimeter_upgrade/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/21/50_years_concorde/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/23/microsoft_365_outage/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/amazon_aws_outage/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aXedxhS2mA8mNB1FVvC3bgAAAoA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The airline's systems failed twice in 2025 - once in [1]July and again in [2]October - forcing Alaska to ground its fleet on both occasions. Tech failures led to hundreds of flight cancellations.
Airbus to migrate critical apps to a sovereign Euro cloud [3]READ MORE
On a conference call with analysts at the end of last week, CEO Benito Minicucci addressed what the company learned from its IT audit and how it plans to prevent future outages.
"The two outages we experienced last year were painful for our guests, employees and financial results," he said. "It's not for a lack of investment. We were investing in IT. I think it was more of a configuration. We had hardware failures. We had backup systems and triple redundancies that didn't kick in."
A failure at Alaska's primary datacenter in October knocked out operational systems and grounded planes, it said at the time.
[4]
The airline has now brought in third-party experts to "really understand how to take this investment we're making... to really address the configuration of our infrastructure so that we stay resilient to a high degree."
[5]
[6]
"Corrective actions are underway and will continue throughout the year, supported by third-party experts as we invest in both near-term fixes and long-term sustainable solutions," Minicucci said.
The outages carried financial consequences. Passenger revenue rose just 2 percent year-over-year in [7]Q4 to $3.25 billion , while net income dropped to $20 million from $71 million a year earlier.
[8]Europe's cloud challenge: Building an Airbus for the digital age
[9]Trump spectrum sale leaves airlines with $4.5B bill for altimeter do-over
[10]Concorde at 50: Twice the speed of sound, twice the economic trouble
[11]Microsoft 365 outage drags on for nearly 10 hours during bad night for North American infra
[12]Major AWS outage across US-East region breaks half the internet
Minicucci said that financial results were "impacted by the IT outage, elevated fuel costs and the impact from government shutdowns."
Alaska's longer-term plans may include migrating to cloud computing. "If there's migration to the cloud and stuff, we'll get you guys up to speed on what we're doing," he told analysts.
[13]
Phew. Thank goodness the cloud never goes down. Maybe Alaska Airline should be safe and work with three providers. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/alaska_airlines_it_incident_grounding/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/24/alaska_airlines_calls_a_ground/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/19/airbus_sovereign_cloud/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aXedxhS2mA8mNB1FVvC3bgAAAoA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aXedxhS2mA8mNB1FVvC3bgAAAoA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aXedxhS2mA8mNB1FVvC3bgAAAoA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://news.alaskaair.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Alaska-Air-Group-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2025-results.pdf
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/29/europes_cloud_challenge_building_an/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/08/airlines_face_another_altimeter_upgrade/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/21/50_years_concorde/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/23/microsoft_365_outage/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/amazon_aws_outage/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aXedxhS2mA8mNB1FVvC3bgAAAoA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
A Memorable Quote ...
Don Bannister
that always comes to mind in these circumstances:
"Failsafe systems usually fail because they fail to failsafe" !
Doctor Syntax
I suppose they ran up against the problem of never knowing if the redundancy will work until you test it and it's risky testing it without knowing it will work.
Cloud computing for an airline?
ComicalEngineer
Let's hope that they have an instrument rating and aren't trying to fly VFR.
Re: Cloud computing for an airline?
cd
He's flying VFR in an IFR world.
Failure mode
I prefer to keep my data at home, even if the internet NEVER fails.