All Southwest Airlines departures were halted in the United States on April 18, but the pause was later lifted.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) implemented the nationwide ground stop at the request of Southwest Airlines, a spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.
The ground stop was lifted around 11:15 a.m. Eastern time.
Southwest described dealing with technical issues.
“Southwest has resumed operations after temporarily pausing flight activity this morning to work through data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. “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.”
A Southwest pilot, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his job, said he received messages showing that the technical problem involved communication systems. Those systems are used during the process of weighing and balancing aircraft. They’re also used to relay weather and other information to and from airliners during flights, he said.
Southwest said customers should check the airline’s website or meet with a customer service agent at an airport.
Customers reported flight delays and questioned when the flights would end up taking off during the ground stop.
Approximately 36 percent of Southwest flights were delayed on Tuesday morning, according to FlightAware.
Southwest operates thousands of flights every day during peak travel periods, according to the company. It operates domestic and international flights.
The temporary halt on Tuesday follows Southwest’s highly publicized computer “meltdown” in December 2022.
A bad winter storm touched off technical and operational problems that overloaded the airline’s outdated computer systems. While other U.S. airlines rebounded within a couple of days, Southwest hobbled along for a week before returning to normal operations. Nearly 17,000 Southwest flights were canceled.
