US FAA issues ground stop advisory for Alaska Airlines

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-faa-issues-ground-stop-advisory-alaska-airlines-2024-04-17/

by rimunroe • 2 years ago

13 8 2 years ago

Appears to be a software issue,

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/faa-grounds-all-al... ("FAA grounds all Alaska Airlines flights nationwide because of computer issues")

- "The airline told CBS News Bay Area it experienced an issue while performing an upgrade to its system that calculates weight and balance, and a ground stop all Alaska and Horizon flights was instituted at about 7:50 a.m. PT."

makestuff• 2 years ago

Anytime I see a ground stop due to a software update it always reminds me of when Delta's data center caught on fire

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/data-....

culopatin• 2 years ago

Didn’t this happen recently? And was also the weight and balance calculation bug?

mikece• 2 years ago

Is this in any way connected with the fact that Alaska uses an all-Boeing fleet? I presume if this was the case then Southwest and half of United could have been ground-stopped as well.

djbusby• 2 years ago

No, it's a non-vehicle software issue.

uticus2• 2 years ago

https://archive.ph/66eu7

uticus2• 2 years ago

Looks like advisory was lifted after about an hour

olliej• 2 years ago

I assumed software but couldn’t work out why that would have had a long hidden issue or suddenly started.

The issue was they upgraded the software and it went wrong somehow, and Alaska airlines requested the ground stop be issued. ie the FAA didn’t find something wrong, rather AA did (no obvious details - was the upgrade taking longer than expected or was the result going wrong somehow?). Anyway I assume there’s contract rules that make delaying due to a “ground stop” from the FAA better than just a 100% internally driven delay?

US FAA issues ground stop advisory for Alaska Airlines

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