Southwest Airlines cancels hundreds of flights as tech issues continue
The Tuesday cancellations followed technical issues Monday evening that grounded flights across the U.S.
USA TODAY, Storyful
Some Southwest Airlines passengers will continue to feel the lingering impact of technical issues that prompted the airline to cancel roughly 500 flights Tuesday, just a day after grounding flights around the nation for another technical issue.
“While our technology issues from Tuesday have been resolved, we are still experiencing a small number of cancellations and delays across our network as we continue working to resume normal operations,” Southwest spokesperson Dan Landson told USA TODAY Wednesday morning.
The airline said Tuesday’s proactive cancellations were tied to “intermittent performance issues” with its network connectivity, whereas Monday’s issues were tied to a third-party weather data provider. Both issues are still being investigated by Southwest.
In the meantime, the airline is urging customers to check their flight status on Southwest.com or speak to customer service agents to help with their travel needs.
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On Tuesday afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Twitter that it had issued a temporary nationwide ground stop at Southwest Airlines’ request while the company resolved a reservation computer issue. The ground stop was later lifted.
Monday tech issues ground flights across the US
The Dallas-based airline had reported that operations were back to normal following Monday’s technical issues before hitting another snag with Tuesday’s “system issue.” Southwest spokesperson Chris Mainz said the company does not believe the two issues were related, but Southwest was “looking into it to make sure.”
Southwest Airlines passengers were stuck for hours at airports across the country Monday because of technical issues.
Southwest’s Landson told USA TODAY Monday evening’s technical issues “prevented the transmission of weather information that is required to safely operate” its aircraft.
“While Southwest teams and the vendor worked to restore connectivity, we implemented a ground stop to protect the safety of our crews and customers,” he said.
Flight-tracking website FlightAware.com showed that Southwest had 1,769 delays and 566 cancellations Tuesday. On Monday, it had over 1,450 delays.
People began posting on social media on Monday evening that their flights were grounded, with some reporting that they were told it was due to issues with the electronic system used to monitor the weather.
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“We appreciate our customers’ patience as we work to get them to their destinations as quickly as possible,” Southwest’s Landson told USA TODAY.
Contributing: Eve Chen, USA TODAY
