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IPFS News Link • Transportation: Air Travel

GROUNDED Southwest Airlines flights resume after system outage sparked travel chaos...

• https://www.the-sun.com, Israel Salas-Rodriguez

THOUSANDS of Southwest Airlines flights have been delayed after a systemwide outage forced the company to issue a stoppage on all flights across the US.

The latest travel delays from Southwest come just four months after the carrier suffered a meltdown over the Christmas holiday rush that saw nearly 17,000 flights canceled.

Southwest requested a ground stoppage at around 10.30am on Tuesday while it worked on fixing "intermittent technology issues."

"As a result of the intermittent technology issues that we experienced, we should hopefully be resuming our operation as soon as possible," the airline replied to several customer complaints on Twitter.

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that Southwest requested a pause in all the airline's departures.

The ground stoppage was lifted just before 11am, resuming takeoffs, however, travelers can expect flight delays.

"Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost," the airline said in a statement.

The airline said its team worked quickly to "minimize flight disruptions" and asked Southwest travelers to check the company's website for flight status updates.

About 800 flights were grounded at the time of the stoppage, with Southwest delaying more than 1,700 scheduled flights, according to FlightAware.

Several irate travelers took to Twitter to report flight delays and their planes sitting on the runway.


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