The telecom company Sprint is currently experiencing issues with its network. We first heard reports of the outage on Twitter but a recording message from Sprint’s support line confirmed the issue. The incident is due to a fiber cut and teams are currently working on it. As a result, Alaska Airlines flights are currently delayed until the network is back up because the carrier can’t check in passengers.
The official statement from Sprint:
Due to a fiber cut in the Pacific northwest, you may have issues making or receiving calls, or accessing data services if you are in the Minnesota, Washington, or Oregon areas. The issue has been identified and crews are working diligently to correct the problem. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
According to Alaska Airlines’ status page, a fiber network was cut in Wisconsin at 7:30AM PST. The two companies seem to report different stories, but at least one cable was cut and network issues are real. While the carrier is figuring out a way to manually check in customers, flights are greatly delayed. According to the AP, CEO Brad Tilden doesn’t expect a full resolution before 5PM PST.
Update: Alaska Airlines operations are slowly returning to normal.
Sprint users are expressing their frustration on Twitter — they first had to find a way to send their tweets without using the network:
https://twitter.com/Remote__Control/status/255348854260645888
https://twitter.com/ayimororose/status/255340180876185600
https://twitter.com/Heliege360/status/255370261870809088