Neither government shutdown nor IT outage can stop the merger of Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines.

On Oct. 15, Seattle-based Alaska achieved one of the first major tech milestones of the combination. All new bookings made after that day for travel on either airline took place on Alaska’s reservations system, or “passenger service system” (PSS) in airline parlance. And all existing bookings at Hawaiian after April 22, 2026 were moved over to the platform.

This is what Charu Jain, senior vice president of merchandising and innovation at Alaska who is overseeing the guest-facing technology integration of Hawaiian, calls the “selling cutover.” 

The idea is that the reservations in Hawaiian’s PSS will “drain” out of the system until none are left by the night of April 21, 2026. Alaska will then turn off the Hawaiian system and the combined airline will run entirely on one platform.

Simple, right? Not at all.

“PSS is the heart of the airline,” says Jain. “Everything guest-facing is connected to the PSS systems.”

That customer centrality is why getting the PSS cutover right is so important for Alaska, especially as it aspires to become a global competitor to the big U.S. carriers — American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.

Alaska’s $1.9-billion takeover of Hawaiian is premised on the idea that a larger, more expansive airline is a stronger competitor. In its case to regulators, Alaska executives promised more growth and competition as a single larger airline than as two smaller carriers.

Federal regulators........

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