April 19, 2023
Southwest Airlines suffered a significant setback on Tuesday, April 18th, when a vendor-supplied firewall failed, resulting in the loss of connection to some operational data and eventually forcing the carrier to cancel all domestic flights. Southwest Airlines claimed that its personnel responded quickly to the problem and worked hard to minimize the effect on flights.
The delay was verified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) about 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday. Southwest also tweeted about the delays, blaming “intermittent technology issues” as the cause. Approximately 30 minutes after the ground halt, the FAA declared it “fully canceled.”
A spokesperson for Southwest airlines said in a statement, “a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost.” The ground stop was soon lifted, and Southwest announced in a tweet at 11:35 a.m. it had resumed operations.
Flightradar24, a flight tracking website, said that there were around 60% fewer Southwest planes in the air compared to the same time last week. Although, this disruption was minor, compared to Southwest’s meltdown in December when it was forced to cancel roughly half of all scheduled flights between December 20 and 29 due in part to issues with its staff scheduling computer systems.
Southwest’s Chief Commercial Officer, Ryan Green, published a statement in reaction to the interruptions, promising to “make every effort and work tirelessly to regain trust.”
The sources for this piece include an article in Axios.
