Alaska Airlines Grounds Its Whole Fleet

Alaska Airlines on Sunday night requested a ground stop for its entire fleet of planes, the Federal Aviation Administration says in an advisory. The fifth-largest airline in the US, which as of April operated 238 planes plus another 45 under the Horizon Air brand, requested the stop for its aircraft as well as those belonging to its subsidiary, the New York Times reports. A problem with the airline's information technology systems is to blame, NBC News reports. "We requested a temporary, systemwide ground stop for Alaska and Horizon Air flights until the issue is resolved," the airline says in a statement. "There will be residual impacts to our operation throughout the evening."

A statement on the airline's website read, "We are experiencing issues with our IT systems. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to resolve the issues." All ticketholders were asked to check flight status before heading to their points of departure. One passenger tells the Times he and his fiance were held on the tarmac for two hours before they and other passengers were finally told to disembark the plane around 10:30pm. The stop was requested around 11pm Eastern time. It is not clear what caused the outage.