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Flights at Seattle Tacoma Airport delayed after possible cyberattack

Flights at Seattle Tacoma Airport delayed after possible cyberattack

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Seattle-Tacoma International Airport said it is still experiencing system outages that may impact air traffic after the Port of Seattle was the target of a potential cyberattack on Saturday.

The airport posted about the possible attack on X (formerly Twitter) shortly after 9 a.m. PT on Saturday, saying it had “isolated critical systems” but had no timetable for when they might be restored in an afternoon update.

The airport’s website was still offline as of 11 a.m. PT Sunday.

“Port teams continue to make progress in restoring systems to normal operation, but there is no estimated time for restoration yet,” the airport said on X on Sunday.

Possible cyber attack may cause delays

According to flight tracking service FlightAware, there were 165 delays and six cancellations on Saturday. As of 11:30 a.m. PT on Sunday, there were 116 flights and four cancellations. It is unclear whether the cancellations were the cause of the delays.

The airport recommended that travelers check flight status with airlines, check in for flights online and avoid checking baggage if possible.

Representatives of Delta Airlines and Alaska Airlines, two airlines that use Seattle-Tacoma as a hub, told the Seattle Times their operations were not affected Saturday.

Alaska Airlines told USA TODAY that its systems were not affected. “But the area where we are beginning to see impacts today is the Port of Seattle baggage sorting system. As such, we are proactively warning guests departing from Seattle not to check baggage if possible.”

Delta Airlines said the impact on airport operations on Sunday was minimal.

The outages came on the heels of the Crowdstrike outage in July, which brought down some airlines’ reservation and flight scheduling systems and led to the cancellation of thousands of flights across the country.

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