System Outages Cause Cancellations, Delays At Southwest

Southwest Airlines canceled more than 550 flights on Tuesday after experiencing unspecified system issues that affected its operations across the country. The incident follows a Monday-night data outage linked back to a third-party weather provider that delayed over 1,450 of the airline’s flights. Southwest is investigating both issues, but does not currently believe they are linked.

“We are in the process of resuming normal operations after a system issue this afternoon that created flight disruptions throughout our network,” Southwest said on Tuesday. “We know many Customers still require assistance and are working to address those concerns as quickly as possible.”

Citing a “reservation computer issue,” the FAA issued a temporary nationwide ground stop for Southwest at the request of the airline on Tuesday afternoon. The ground stop was lifted after about an hour. In addition to the cancellations, approximately 1,800 Southwest flights were delayed on Tuesday with an additional 315 canceled and 620 delayed as of Wednesday morning.