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Alaska Airlines (ALK) IT outage halts flights. (00:30) Target (TGT) cuts 1,800 corporate job positions in significant downsizing. (01:39) All eyes on CPI report after weeks of economic data blackout. (02:20)
This is an abridged transcript.
Operations at Alaska Airlines (NYSE:ALK) have been restored after the airline grounded all its flights on Thursday after an IT outage impacted operations.
Just before 4:30pm Pacific time, Alaska Airlines sent a tweet on X that there was a temporary ground stop in place and that passengers should check their flight status before going to the airport.
The airline sent another update on X after midnight Pacific time that operations had been restored and the ground stop had been lifted at 11:30 pm.
The company warned that more than 220 flights had been cancelled and that more flight disruptions were likely.
Passengers on Alaska and Horizon should check the flight status before going to the airport.
This is the second IT outage this year. The last incident was in July.
Due to the outage, Alaska Airlines also announced that it has postponed its conference call for third-quarter 2025 financial results. The call was scheduled for today at 11:30am Eastern time.
Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) disclosed on Thursday that it will cut 1,800 positions from its corporate headcount. The specific employees being let go will not be notified until next Tuesday.
The restructuring will include 1,000 employees being let go and the removal of roughly 800 open positions, which is about 8% of Target’s (TGT) global team. Notably, U.S. corporate staff have been asked to work remotely next week while the notification process plays out.
The Minneapolis-based retailer said changes were aimed at making Target’s (TGT) operations more agile.
Shares of Target (TGT) are 0.7% higher in premarket trading.
Investors will finally get some official economic data from the government, with the Consumer Price Index report due for release this morning, even as the federal shutdown continues to drag on.
Economists largely expect persistent retail inflation in September, increasing at the same pace as the month before.
Headline CPI in September is seen rising 0.4% M/M, same as the prior month. On a Y/Y basis, CPI is expected to rise 3.1%, compared with +2.9% in August.
Core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, is projected to rise 0.3% M/M in September and 3.1% Y/Y – the same increases seen in August.
The CPI report was scheduled for Oct. 15, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics pushed it to Oct. 24 due to the government shutdown.
The data will be the last significant economic reading before the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy meeting next week.
CPI will be released at 8:30am.
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Dow, S&P and Nasdaq futures are in the green. Crude oil is flat at $61/barrel. Bitcoin is up 1.1% at $111,000. Gold is down 0.3% at $4,070.
The FTSE 100 is down 0.1% and the DAX is down 0.1%.
The biggest movers for the day premarket: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) +8% – Shares gained after the company delivered a stronger-than-expected Q3, with both earnings and guidance beating Wall Street estimates.
On today’s economic calendar:
It’s Friday so that means it’s also news quiz day. Test your knowledge of what happened this week. I’ll leave a link to the quiz in the show notes section.