Alaska Airlines had an outage in Seattle that caused flights to be halted across the country

Ted S. Warren/AP

In this Monday, April 4, 2016, file photo, Alaska Airlines planes with the company's new livery and tail logo, left, and the old livery used to promote service to Hawaii, right, are shown parked at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle. Alaska Airlines slipped past rival Hawaiian Airlines to post the best on-time rating for U.S. carriers in July 2016, the Department of Transportation said Tuesday, Sept. 13.

• Alaska Airlines had an outage in Seattle on Sunday morning that left flights grounded. 
• The flights still showed as on time, leaving passengers confused about whether flights had been canceled. 
• Some passengers were headed to a big consumer electronics conference called CES in Las Vegas, and others were headed to JPMorgan's healthcare conference in San Francisco.

Alaska Airlines halted flights on Sunday morning, leaving customers stuck at the airport, after a national outage that began at 3:30 a.m. Pacific time and ended at 5:15 a.m.

The airline stopped some customers from boarding flights, and gate agents weren't sure when flights would resume. 

A representative for Alaska Airlines told Business Insider that the outage took place in the airline's Seattle office, impacting the operations system and causing the airline to ground flights. 

The representative on Sunday morning said five flights were canceled and 27 were delayed because of the outage. 

The outage likely occurred because of high winds in Seattle. 

The delays and cancellations are affecting travelers heading to the annual Consumer Electrics Show in Las Vegas and the JPMorgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco, including Business Insider reporters.