Widespread computer system glitches have reportedly forced Southwest Airlines to ground its flights throughout the country for the second consecutive day.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a brief notice on its real-time reporting system that all of the Dallas-based carrier’s flights were stopped “due to technology issues. The scope is the contiguous U.S. airspace.”
“The FAA issued a temporary nationwide ground stop at the request of Southwest Airlines while the company resolved a reservation computer issue,” FAA spokesman Ian Gregor told The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday.
Southwest also acknowledged the outage: “We are aware of system issues and are working quickly to resolve,” the airline said in a social media post. “We will share more info soon.”
About 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, the Sacramento International Airport advised passengers that “Southwest Airlines is currently experiencing system outages. Passengers should expect delays, updates will be provided as they become available,” according to the airport’s Facebook page.
It was unclear how many flights have been grounded Tuesday, though flight tracking website FlightAware said more than 1,100 flights had been delayed as of 12:30 p.m. Pacific time; another roughly 500 Southwest flights were canceled.
“Southwest is in the process of resuming normal operations after a brief pause in our flight activity resulting from intermittent performance issues with our network connectivity Tuesday afternoon,” Southwest spokesman Dan Landson told The Bee in an email Tuesday afternoon. “Our teams are working quickly to minimize flight disruptions and customer impact.”
Landson also said they appreciate Southwest customers’ patience as we work to get them to their destinations and asked that travelers use Southwest.com to check flight status or consult a Southwest customer service agent at the airport for help.
Shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday, Southwest announced on Twitter that customer service wait times might be longer than normal, so officials encouraged customers to visit http://swa.is/ChangeFlight to explore self-service options.
Flights had resumed Tuesday morning after the company halted air operations on about 1,500 flights Monday evening. The company at the time said that glitches from a third-party weather data provider prompted the outage.
“We are aware of system issues and are working quickly to resolve,” Southwest posted on Twitter and Facebook at 11 a.m. Tuesday. “We will share more info soon.”
A system glitch that led to “intermittent performance issues” from a third-party weather data provider on Monday night prevented the “transmission of weather information that is required to safely operate our aircraft,” Southwest told Fox Business.
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