Southwest Airlines resumes departures after tech problem grounds flights

A technical problem forced Southwest Airlines to halt departures Tuesday morning, delaying more than 2,100 flights – the second incident in recent months to ground the carrier’s operations.

Southwest asked the Federal Aviation Administration for the pause after saying it experienced a “firewall failure” that caused the loss of some operational data. The ground stop was lifted after about an hour, but the effects continued to ripple through its system for much of the day as more than half of the carrier’s flights experienced delays.

“Southwest has resumed operations after temporarily pausing flight activity this morning to work through data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure,” the company said in a statement. “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.”

The system failure is a setback for an air carrier that is still trying to rebuild its image and improve reliability after a high-profile holiday meltdown that affected more than a million customers and drew scrutiny from lawmakers and federal regulators. The carrier last month released a plan outlining how it would avoid similar problems in the future.

Even so, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., chair of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said Tuesday’s incident is more evidence that Southwest needs to focus on improving its technology.

“This is another demonstration that Southwest Airlines needs to upgrade their systems and stop the negative impacts to individual travelers,” she said in a statement.

According to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, more than 2,100 of the carrier’s flights were delayed Tuesday, which accounted for about 52% of its daily schedule. The company apologized to customers for the delays.

“We appreciate the patience of our Customers and Employees during this morning’s brief disruption,” a company statement said.

Tuesday’s technical issues came four months after a massive December meltdown forced Southwest to cancel more than 16,700 flights over 10 days. Bob Jordan, the airline’s chief executive, pledged a thorough review of the incident, then last month the carrier released an action plan that said the company planned to spend $1.3 billion to upgrade and improve IT systems.

After a disastrous end to 2022, Southwest had appeared to right itself over the past few months.

Last month, the carrier touted improvements in its on-time performance when compared with last year. Customers appeared to be returning, spurred in part by the 25,000 bonus miles Southwest offered as an apology to customers affected in December. In a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the carrier said nearly half of customers affected have since booked or flown with the airline.

Experts say small disruptions like Tuesday’s delays could have an outsize effect for the carrier.

“Stuff happens … whatever the cause, the failure clearly won’t help the Southwest brand, ” said Robert W. Mann, of aviation consulting firm R.W. Mann & Co.

Rob Britton, a former American Airlines executive who is now an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, said: “The overall disruption today is likely to be quite small, but in these situations when you have serial crises, the damage to the brand, the company’s reputation, (it) adds up.”

Britton said Southwest has consistently lagged behind other major carriers in the amount of money it spends to upgrade IT systems, which he said are critical to efficient operations.

Southwest, which is set to report quarterly earnings later this month, has estimated the December disruption would cost more than $1 billion.

Southwest’s pilots, who are in contract negotiations with the carrier and have been increasingly critical of how the airline is managed, posted about Tuesday’s incident on social media. The pilots’ union had been among the employee groups that had warned the carrier for years that its IT systems needed to be upgraded.

“As we’re sure you are all aware, @SouthwestAir had yet another technology meltdown today, causing the nationwide grounding of all of our flights … or, as we call it, ‘Tuesday,’ ” the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association tweeted.

Southwest’s recent struggles – and those of the industry as it has tried to meet a surge in passenger demand after the depths of the pandemic – have fueled calls for more consumer protections as Congress begins work on an FAA funding bill.

Despite receiving more than $50 billion in federal pandemic relief intended to ensure airlines were prepared for the return of passengers, the industry’s restart has been plagued by cancellations and delays. At the same time, consumer complaints have also have risen dramatically.