Southwest Airlines experienced significant flight delays on Tuesday morning due to technical difficulties, leading to a temporary suspension of operations. The airline attributed these delays to "data connection issues caused by a firewall failure," which resulted in a brief grounding of flights.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed the ground stop at Southwest's request, citing "equipment issues." However, the halt was lifted shortly after, and by 11:35 a.m. ET, Southwest announced via social media that flights had resumed.
Dan Landson, a spokesperson for Southwest, explained that the problem arose when a vendor-provided firewall malfunctioned, disrupting access to some operational data. By early afternoon, 1,820 flights, or 43% of the airline's schedule, had been delayed, while only nine flights were canceled, according to FlightAware. Southwest assured that its team worked diligently to minimize the impact of the disruptions.
The FAA confirmed that Southwest had requested a pause in departures. This incident follows a major disruption in December, when the airline canceled over 16,700 flights due to a combination of a severe winter storm and outdated crew scheduling systems. In response, Southwest recently introduced an "action plan" to prevent similar issues in the future.
In a social media update, Southwest described the current situation as "intermittent technology issues" and apologized for any inconvenience, expressing hope to resume normal operations quickly. Passengers took to social media to express their frustrations over the delays.
During the holiday season, the airline struggled more than others due to its outdated crew scheduling system, which required crew members to call in manually rather than update their availability electronically. This led to nearly half of Southwest's flights being canceled between December 20 and 29, with some days seeing up to 75% of flights grounded.