Hundreds of Southwest flights delayed due to tech issue

Hundreds of Southwest Airlines flights were delayed on Tuesday because of a technology issue.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) tweeted shortly after 10:30 a.m. that Southwest requested a pause on all of its departures, while deferring to the airline for any additional information.

The agency then tweeted at 11:10 a.m. the pause was lifted and service resumed. It said the airline experienced an issue with one of its “internal systems.”

More than 1,700 of the airline’s flights were delayed as of about 11:20 a.m., according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.

Southwest responded to several Twitter users earlier in the morning about the issue, saying it hoped to fix the problem shortly. 

“As a result of the intermittent technology issues that we experienced, we should hopefully be resuming our operation as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we’re hoping to get everyone going ASAP,” the airline told one user. 

The Hill has reached out to Southwest for additional comment.

The delays come a few months after the airline was forced to cancel and delay thousands of flights around the holiday season because of problems with its scheduling system. After winter storms hit two of the airline’s largest hubs in Denver and Chicago, Southwest was unable to reschedule those flights.

Southwest workers have also voiced complaints about the airline not making investments to modernize its communications system.

The chaos from the delays and cancellations cost the company up to $825 million.

Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson testified about the situation before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in February. He said at the hearing the company is spending more than $1 billion on technology upgrades, an increase of 25 percent from the amount spent before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Southwest also announced a plan to prevent a similar meltdown from happening again at the end of last month. The plan included purchasing new winter weather equipment to better handle storms, increasing customer service capacity during particularly busy travel times and enhancing its scheduling software.

— Updated at 11:46 a.m.