Southwest Airlines flights grounded due to equipment issues

CNN
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Hundreds of Southwest Airlines flights have been delayed after technical issues that prompted the airline to quickly halt its operations on Tuesday morning.

Southwest said the flight delays have been the consequence of “data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure,” a drawback that led to a transient ground stop.

The Federal Aviation Administration initiated the ground stop at the airline’s request, citing “equipment issues.” The ground stop was soon lifted, and in a tweet at 11:35 a.m. ET Southwest said it had resumed operations.

“Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost,” spokesman Dan Landson said in a assertion.

Southwest had delayed 1,820 flights or 43% of its schedule as of just after midday Tuesday, according to FlightAware. The airline has canceled only 9 flights on Tuesday, according to FlightAware. Southwest says its staff “worked quickly to minimize disruptions.”

Southwest reported technology issues Tuesday morning and said it could “hopefully be resuming our operation as soon as possible.”

The FAA in a assertion told CNN that Southwest “requested the FAA pause the airline’s departures.”

The issues come months after the airline was pressured to cancel more than 16,700 flights between December 20 and 29, roughly half its schedule during that period. The airline attributed the meltdown in half to modifications to its workers scheduling pc systems. Southwest last month unveiled an “action plan” to forestall another operational meltdown.

Southwest called the latest drawback “intermittent technology issues” in a social media post to clients. Several took to social media to complain about delayed flights.

“We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we’re hoping to get everyone going ASAP,” the airline wrote in another social media post.

An enormous winter storm began the service issues during the vacation season, but Southwest had a a lot more durable time recovering because of an antiquated crew scheduling system that was rapidly overwhelmed, leaving the airline unable to get the staffing it needed to places to operate flights. Nearly half of its schedule was canceled during from December 20 to December 29. Some days, as many as 75% of its scheduled flights have been grounded.

Part of what created worse issues at Southwest than at other airways is that crew members had to call in to the airline, relatively than notify it electronically, to allow them to it of their availability.