Southwest Airlines grounds all flights across US after technology issue
- All Southwest Airlines flights have been grounded across the United States on Tuesday
- The decision was taken after the airlines faced an "intermittent technology issue"
- A Federal Aviation Administration also sent out a tweet regarding this massive development
All Southwest Airlines flights have been grounded across the United States after the airlines faced an “intermittent technology issue,” on Tuesday.
“As a result of the intermittent technology issues that we experienced, we should hopefully be resuming our operation as soon as possible,” a tweet from Southwest Airlines read Tuesday. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we’re hoping to get everyone going ASAP.”
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Good morning, Abby. As a result of the intermittent technology issues that we experienced, we should hopefully be resuming our operation as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we're hoping to get everyone going ASAP. -Jeni
— Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) April 18, 2023
A Federal Aviation Administration also sent out a tweet regarding this massive development around 9:30 am that read that “Southwest Airlines requested the FAA pause the airline’s departures.”
Southwest Airlines requested the FAA pause the airline’s departures.
Please contact Southwest Airlines for more.
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) April 18, 2023
Around the same time, Flight Aware listed 795 delays and 3 cancellations for Southwest Airlines flights nationwide. By 10:48 a.m. ET, the number had gone up to more than 1,200 flights. This was 30% of Southwest’s scheduled flights.
Meanwhile, no ETA was given as to when the issue would be resolved, meaning that chaos unfolded on social media of travelers who had been recently informed their flights had been delayed for various reasons. Most of them were made aware that there was an “outage” when it comes to the airlines’ operations.
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“@Southwestair flight delayed because of a system outage,” one traveler tweeted. Another wrote, “We are sitting at the gate with a ‘systemwide paperwork issue’ and delayed at least 30 minutes – why would you not tell passengers before they boarded? There was no indication of any delay before we sat down. Terrible customer service.”
A Denver traveler confirmed that passengers at the airport had been informed that “there is a systemwide computer crash and all flights are grounded.”
At Chicago’s Midway International Airport in Chicago, at least 24 Southwest flights had an updated status of “Scheduled-Delayed.”
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