Thousands of Southwest Airlines flights delayed after nationwide ground stop 

Thousands of Southwest Airlines flights were delayed after an intermittent technology issue caused a nationwide ground stop and temporarily halted its operations on Tuesday. 

Southwest said there were “data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure” that led it to temporarily pause its operations nationwide. 

“Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost,” Southwest said in a statement. “Southwest Teams worked quickly to minimize flight disruptions.”

Per the airline’s request, the Federal Aviation Administration started the ground stop at around 9:30 a.m., citing “equipment issues.” After the ground stop was lifted at around 11:35 a.m., the airline resumed its operations. 

However, the ground stop caused more than 2,200 flights to be delayed—around 43% of its scheduled flights for Tuesday afternoon, according to flight tracker website Flight Aware. So far, the airline has only canceled nine flights. 

“It was a 17-minute ground stop. This will have no long-lasting effect on Southwest’s reputation,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst with Atmosphere Research Group. “What matters now for Southwest is getting to the cause and doing all it can to ensure incidents like this don’t occur again.”

Four months ago, Southwest was forced to cancel more than 16,700 flights as part of a meltdown caused by a massive winter storm, followed by changes to its staff scheduling computer system. 

Blizzard conditions, winds, and heavy snow have caused more than 3,800 flights to be canceled and more than 7,100 to be delayed on December 26, about 65% of its scheduled flights during the busy holiday season. The ordeal resulted in a negative impact of $800 million for the airline. 

In addition to having their flights canceled, Southwest Customers had to deal with more than 10 hours of waiting times to get on the phone with a Southwest representative. Others had to wait in long lines at the airports to rebook their flights or had problems with lost baggage.