Southwest Airlines briefly paused all departures across the country Tuesday morning after reporting technical issues, resulting in compounding flight delays.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) tweeted that the airline had requested the pause, directing customers to Southwest for all questions. Just after 11 a.m., the FAA tweeted that the pause had been lifted, attributing Southwest’s request to a “technical issue with one of their internal systems.”
The pause caused more than 1,500 flights, or 36% of Southwest’s schedule, to be delayed, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware. The airline has tweeted responses to many disgruntled customers, writing that “technical challenges are unexpected and inconvenient for all,” along with apologies.
“Southwest has resumed operations after temporarily pausing flight activity this morning to work through data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure,” Dan Landson, a public relations adviser at Southwest, tells Fast Company. “Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost. Southwest Teams worked quickly to minimize flight disruptions . . . We appreciate the patience of our customers and employees during this morning’s brief disruption.”
The airline also announced in a notice on the website that, to curb the impact of the delays, customers flying today can rebook—in accordance with their accommodation procedures—at no additional charge within the next two weeks.
The airline previously had a meltdown in December during the holiday season, when more than 16,000 flights were canceled, leading the company to incur a pretax loss of approximately $800 million.
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