Alaska Airlines flights resume after being grounded over aircraft system issue

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An issue with the system that calculates weight and balance of Alaska Airlines planes, causing all of its flights to be halted on Wednesday morning, has been resolved and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) canceled a ground stop.

The ground stop, which halted all Alaska Airlines departures as well as for Horizon Air, a regional carrier owned by Alaska Air Group, was instituted at approximately 7:50 am PT (1450 GMT), the airline said. It lasted for about an hour.

"This morning we experienced an issue while performing an upgrade to the system that calculates our weight and balance," the airline said in a statement. Residual flight delayed are expected throughout the day, the airline said.

In a statement earlier, the FAA said the carrier "asked the FAA to pause the airline's mainline departures nationwide."

Shares of Alaska Air Group, which owns the airline, pared gains after the advisory, and were last up 2.6% at 11:51 ET (1551 GMT).

Responding to passenger complaints on social media platform X, the airline said it was working on getting people moving as soon as possible.

The FAA, in an advisory, said that flights for SkyWest, which provides regional service for Alaska Airlines and others, had been excluded from the ground stop.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh, Ismail Shakil and Rajesh Kumar Singh; editing by Rami Ayyub and Bill Berkrot)