Alaska Air raises profit forecast on summer demand, outage-linked bookings

(Reuters) - Alaska Air Group raised its third-quarter profit forecast on Thursday, benefiting from strong summer travel demand and re-bookings from passengers stranded due to flight cancellations caused by a global cyber outage in July.

The cyber outage caused by a software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike forced multiple airlines to halt flight operations while leaving thousands of passengers stranded across the nation.

However, it also benefited airlines who were not heavily impacted and led to a flurry of re-bookings from affected travelers.

Alaska Air's shares were up 1.6% in premarket trading.

Major U.S. carriers have also experienced strong demand throughout the summer travel season that has helped them boost revenues.

Last week, peer JetBlue raised its third-quarter revenue forecast, citing a benefit from outage-related re-bookings.

Alaska Air now expects its current-quarter profit per share to be in the range of $2.15 to $2.25, compared with the airline's previous forecast of $1.40 to $1.60.

The airline also forecast lower fuel costs for the quarter through September owing to moderating prices of jet fuel.

(Reporting by Shivansh Tiwary in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)