Southwest Airlines Grounds Flights Again Due to Technical Failure

by Donald Wood
Last updated: 11:10 AM ET, Tue April 18, 2023

Update: April 19, 2023 at 7:55 a.m. ET

Southwest Airlines revealed that an intermittent technology issue caused flights to be grounded on Tuesday before it was lifted by mid-morning, but thousands of delays were reported as a result of the 17-minute shutdown.

According to FlightAware.com, over 2,400 flights offered by Southwest yesterday were delayed across the United States, but only 18 were canceled. Southwest urged customers to check on their flight status “and explore self-service options” for travel.

“Southwest has resumed operations after temporarily pausing flight activity this morning to work through data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure,” Southwest told Reuters in a statement. “Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost.”

Currently stuck on a @SouthwestAir plane at @AUStinAirport. @KXAN_News confirms Southwest told AUS just before 9 am about system-wide technology malfunction. Southwest did not give a reason. Southwest Airlines tells AUS it is delaying flights in and out of AUS. pic.twitter.com/iknyJDxfdD
— Tom Miller (@TomMillerKXAN) April 18, 2023

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also commented on Southwest’s latest blunder:

“We are here to ensure passengers have strong protections when airline failures like this affect their plans,” Buttigieg said.

Original Text

Southwest Airlines grounded all flights on Tuesday due to a computer failure.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Southwest officials requested the federal agency temporarily pause the carrier’s departures due to “intermittent technology issues.”

A spokesperson for the airline said on Twitter that Southwest was forced to “implement a ground stop as a result of intermittent issues that were experienced,” and that the company was hoping to resume operations as soon as possible.

The airline has since resumed operations.

Users across social media reported the nationwide ground stop was impacting flight schedules, with FlightAware.com reporting nearly 2,200 delays or more than half of the airline's scheduled flights as of 5:30 p.m. ET. The delays are expected to carry on throughout the remainder of the day as the company works to remedy the situation.

Southwest continues to face heavy criticism after a technology failure during the busy winter holiday travel period resulted in more than 16,000 flight cancellations.

This story is developing and will be updated.

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