Southwest Airlines flights grounded due to equipment issues

CNN
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Hundreds of Southwest Airlines flights were delayed due to technical problems that forced the airline to temporarily suspend operations Tuesday morning.

Southwest said the flight delays were the result of “data connectivity issues caused by a firewall outage,” an issue that led to a brief shutdown of ground transportation.

Federal Aviation Administration initiated a ground stop at the airline's requestciting “hardware issues.” The ground stop was soon canceled and Southwest tweeted at 11:35 a.m. ET he resumed his activities.

“Early this morning, the vendor-provided firewall went down and connections to some operational data were unexpectedly lost,” spokesman Dan Landson said in a statement.

Southwest had delayed 1,820 flights, or 43% of its schedule, as of Tuesday afternoon, according to FlightAware. The airline canceled just nine flights on Tuesday, according to FlightAware. Southwest said its workers “worked quickly to minimize disruption.”

Southwest reported the technology issues Tuesday morning and said it “hopes to resume our operations as soon as possible.”

In a statement, the FAA told CNN that Southwest “has asked the FAA to suspend the airline's flights.”

The problems come months after the airline was forced to cancel more than 16,700 flights between Dec. 20 and Dec. 29, roughly half of its schedule during that period. the airline partially explained the accident make changes to computer personnel planning systems. Southwest last month unveiled an “action plan” to prevent another operational failure.

Southwest called the latest problem “recurrent technology issues” in a social media post to customers. Some of them took to social media to complain about flight delays.

“We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we hope to get everyone up and running as soon as possible,” the airline wrote in another social media post.

Massive winter storm problems began with service during the holiday season, But Southwest had a much harder time recovering from an outdated crew scheduling system that quickly broke down, leaving the airline unable to staff the airline's locations. Almost half of the schedule was canceled from December 20 to 29. On some days, up to 75% of scheduled flights were cancelled.

Part of what created bigger problems at Southwest than at other airlines is that crew members had to call the airline rather than notify it by email to let them know they were available.