Oct 31 (Reuters) - Alaska Air Group ( ALK ) said on

Friday it is partnering with Accenture ( ACN ) to conduct an

audit of its IT systems, after an outage earlier this week

grounded its flights across the U.S.

The disruption stemmed from a global outage affecting

Microsoft's ( MSFT ) Azure platform, which has impacted Alaska

Air's ( ALK ) key systems, including its websites.

The outage had forced the airline to cancel more than 400

flights, which halted travel for more than 49,000 passengers.

Alaska Air ( ALK ) will update its forecast for the fourth quarter

in early December, "once the full financial impact of the recent

IT disruptions is understood," it said in a regulatory filing.

Last week, the carrier lowered its annual profit forecast

and missed Wall Street expectations for third-quarter adjusted

profit on higher fuel costs.

The company did not host or reschedule its third-quarter

earnings call.