Hundreds of Southwest Airline Flights were delayed after a technical issue caused the airline to stop its operations temporarily on Tuesday morning.
Data Connection Issues
According to Southwest Airline, the reason for the delay was “data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure.” And this is what caused the ground to stop for a brief period.
The Airline requested, and The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initiated this ground stop citing “equipment issues.” The ground stop was lifted soon, and Southwest has resumed its operations since.
Southwest had delayed around 43% percent of its scheduled flights, that’s more than 1800 flights as of the afternoon of Tuesday, says FlightAware. On Tuesday, Southwest only canceled nine flights, According to FlightAware.
Workers worked their magic
According to Southwest, the airline workers “worked quickly to minimize disruptions.” The Airline faced the problems months after being forced to cancel more than 16700 flights between 20th December to 29th December, which is around half of its schedule.
During the holiday season, a massive winter storm started the service problems and Southwest had a much tougher time recovering. This was a result of an antiquated crew scheduling system that was overwhelmed in a short period of time, which led to the airline being unable to get the adequate staffing it needed for operations.
Southwest Airlines grounds all flights nationwide due to technical issue
Reason for the Meltdown
The Airline attributes changes to its staff scheduling computer system as a partial reason for the meltdown. Last month, the airline revealed an action plan to prevent any meltdowns like these in the future.
Southwest Airlines called the latest problem “intermittent technology issues” in its social media post after numerous people complained about the delayed flights. The airline wrote in another social media post— “We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we’re hoping to get everyone going ASAP”
