Passengers check in for Southwest Airlines flights at Chicago Midway International Airport on April 18, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois.
Scott Olson | Getty Images
Southwest Airlines briefly paused its departures on Tuesday after reporting technical problems, delaying half of its planned flights.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the bottom stop had been lifted, but greater than 2,100 flights were delayed as of 4 p.m. ET, in keeping with flight-tracking site FlightAware. The delays accounted for greater than half of U.S. flights on Tuesday.
“Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost,” Southwest said in an announcement. “Southwest Teams worked quickly to reduce flight disruptions.”
Southwest shares fell 0.8% on Tuesday, while the broader market and other large airline stocks rose.
Airlines or the FAA will occasionally pause departures, particularly at certain airports, to avoid bottlenecks for parking on the bottom.
Southwest had a meltdown over the year-end holidays, which drove 1000’s of flight cancellations and resulted in an $800 million pretax hit for the fourth quarter. The airline upgraded scheduling software that couldn’t handle quite a few changes to crew assignments during severe winter weather late last 12 months.
The problems Tuesday didn’t look like related to that software.
The previous meltdown increased scrutiny on the airline’s technology from Washington.
“That is one other demonstration that Southwest Airlines must upgrade their systems and stop the negative impacts to individual travelers,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, in an announcement Tuesday.
Southwest is scheduled to report first-quarter results on April 27 before the market opens.
