Southwest Airlines planes were grounded for more than an hour Tuesday due to a technical issue with the carrier’s firewall systems – leading to more than 1,900 delays and several cancellations.
The nationwide stop started about 9:45am and persisted for more than an hour, causing a flood of frustrated travelers to lash out at the embattled carrier on social media.
For roughly an hour and a half, captains assured customers their planes would soon take off and were grounded due to software malfunction – while an explanation from a company rep said the disruptions stemmed from ‘intermittent technology issues.’
The Federal Aviation Administration eventually lifted the pause at 11:10am, revealing the order was issued at the airline’s request while staffers worked to resolve ‘data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure.’
The statement, however, provided little insight as to what actually caused the cross-country grounding, the affects of which are still being seen.
According to data provided by the flight tracker FlightAware, 1,982 Southwest flights are still experiencing delays, four months after a similar system outage saw more than 16,000 Southwest flights cancelled.
h/t GenieInABottle