Southwest Airlines Co. temporarily halted flights nationwide as it grappled with “intermittent technology issues,” just four months after an operations meltdown drew heavy scrutiny to the budget carrier.
(Bloomberg) — Southwest Airlines Co. temporarily halted flights nationwide as it grappled with “intermittent technology issues,” just four months after an operations meltdown drew heavy scrutiny to the budget carrier.
The airline said Tuesday that it was resuming normal operations after requesting a nationwide ground stop earlier in the day. In an emailed statement, Southwest blamed a failure in a “vendor-supplied firewall.”
The US Federal Aviation Administration separately said that the grounding was canceled after the airline earlier requested a flight pause.
The company disclosed the tech problem in a tweet earlier Tuesday after a number of passenger complaints on the social-media platform of being stuck on planes awaiting departure or not being able to get to gates after landing. Southwest also said there were issues with its website and mobile app.
Southwest’s delays swelled to 1,512, or 36% of its schedule so far Tuesday, as of 11:10 a.m. New York time, according to the tracking website FlightAware.com.
Shares of Southwest fell as much as 3.9% in New York before paring the decline.
While minor technology snags aren’t unusual for airlines, Southwest’s latest troubles come as the airline faces ongoing scrutiny over a system meltdown in December. The company’s crew scheduling software became overwhelmed by a winter storm, forcing cancellation of 16,700 flights over the final days of the year. The company upgraded a software tool that it uses to plan flight crews to prevent further disruptions.
The Dallas-based airline had to cancel or delay more than 1,400 flights over two days in June 2021 after network connectivity problems interrupted operations. Southwest also had to briefly halt flights in February 2019, delaying around 600 flights, after a glitch in software that automatically downloaded flight plans to the FAA.
–With assistance from Alan Levin.
(Updates with additional details beginning in first paragraph)
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