https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...ated-failures/

I guess he wasn't standing in line with me and the 1,000+ other people at the end of October in SEA. Speaking for myself I have very little confidence in their tech stack and expect something will go wrong when I fly with them.

"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."

I disagree. It's systemic when you do not have the team capable of getting the job done. You get what you pay for, AAG.

And you can’t win a championship without the right team on the field.

literally no company has the “team capable of getting the job done” because the goalposts are constantly shifting no company is immune from tech failure, look at recent AWS and MSFT azure failures. Getting the job done is how you recover and help the customer after these incidents.

Says the company that only yesterday had their check in and web site fail.

There are big outages we hear about on the evening news… and then there is the frequent instability of basic services such as the app or website that should have 100% reliability.

I agree with the later part of your post about recovery, but I don't agree with the first part, at least with respect to AS. Their entire system from ticketing to mileage credit after a flight is just... terrible.

I haven't flown a ton of AS (or 027 tickets) this year but I looked back at my mileage history to document the problems I've encountered:

• LA 602/603 (AS Partner ticket): Struggled with phantom availability during booking, partner EQMs never posted. Had to request manual credit.
• FJ award booking in mid-May: Again, phantom partner issues prevented me from booking anything to NZ. Paid cash on AC/UA instead.
• AS720/AS523 (SEA-FAT/RNO-SEA): No issues
• PD 482/483 on 027 stock (YVR-YHM): Had to use old site to work around the "can't sell tickets between two foreign countries" error. After flight, mileage posted incorrectly, had to call and wait over an hour to get it corrected.
• AS 1422 (SEA-LIH): Baggage systems down, kiosk didn't work due to Azure outage. Had to wait in line for over an hour to check a bag despite being fifth in the line. Barely made flight. Extra seat mileage doesn't post automatically, wrote in over 4 weeks ago to mileage.plan with no response yet. Repinged them yesterday.
• AS 8308 (LIH-HNL): Kiosks down in LIH. Had to manually check bag.
• HA 822 (HNL-SEA): No issues

So out of 7 actual/attempted segments/trips - only 2 didn't suffer from some kind of IT problem. To give some perspective, I had zero IT issues with LATAM or even Aerolineas Argentinas this year, neither of which are exactly known for quality IT. I don't expect a 1.000 batting average, but I also think they're delusional if they really believe their IT systems are "OK".

They're not OK by any stretch of the imagination. Talk to your customers instead of a company that has financial incentive to tell you what you want to hear.

newsflash: every airline struggles with partner booking and availability. It's part systems not talking to each other it’s part gamesmanship.

no US airline can sell you a ticket from one Canadian city to another.

How is an azure outage that impacted thousands of companies worldwide an Alaska issue?

None of this is unique to Alaska and there’s no right person or people or team that can fix any of it.

I really don't know what to tell you if you think the sheer quantity of phantom award availability issues on Alaska are somehow par for the course. There are entire months on the calendar where availability is shown, only to fail when you try to ticket. I don't doubt that other airlines hit it, but I have never had a single problem with BA, AA, DL, or AC when I've booked with them.

And, Alaska did sell me that YVR-YHM ticket for cash... redacted the name and whatnot of course but that's a 027 ticket number. So their booking engine logic is wrong somewhere, whether it's allowing me to buy the ticket in the first place, or trying to block the sale:

im not saying you’re wrong. I’m saying this isn’t unique to Alaska. Try buying a domestic canada ticket on any other us Airline’s site. You can’t. You’d have to find some insane work around. Also, Alaska went cashless years ago.

Phantom award booking, yes even at the scale your example points out, is the same across the board.

the best quote from Tackett in the Times article was a bit farther down: "But he did acknowledge that Alaska's IT teams are 'spread, maybe, a tiny bit thin,' as they work on integrating the (AS and HA) platforms and other changes Alaska has introduced this year, including a joint loyalty program and a new premium credit card."

What exactly did they change that will prevent these problems from reoccurring? That Azure-related outage alone cost them $50 million.

Reading further into the article, it seems they are planning to ditch the A321s, but aren’t ready to say so.

I certainly hope a flight crew doesn't actually have to ditch a 321 in the middle of the ocean, but I also hope they have the necessary training and skills to maximize the likelihood of a safe outcome

I don't think so, I think we have all become numb to Alaska's ongoing never ending IT issues and have just decided that's the way it is. I have switched the vast majority of my flying to UA now as I just didn't want to deal with the mess anymore. I have just been stunned by the functionality of the app, everything seems to work right the vast majority of the time, and I have not had to call in to unlock a trip because of a seven minute time change. I dont have to rely on partners to get me most places. Its a whole new world!

AA has had phantom availability showing from AY for maybe a decade now? BA has had CX phantom availability to the point where I believe the recommendation in the past has been to verify with the AS site. DL's solution to phantom award availability is simply not to have some of their partner awards available whatsoever. (KQ comes to mind.)

I've had my issues with AS and I have no doubt they need to make IT improvements, but DL just went through the CrowdStrike fiasco and tried to blame it on their vendor, BA's IT is a running joke on their forum, AA's app + public-facing IT is way behind the times ...

You just have to connect in Denver now to go anywhere! Brilliant!