Many Southwest Airlines flights were canceled in the previous 24 hours because of a series of technical issues, the carrier said, leaving passengers distressed in airports across the country. By Tuesday evening, the latest ground stop had been lifted and Southwest said it was “in the process of resuming normal operations.”
The airline first grounded planes on Monday night after an third-party weather data provider experienced “intermittent performance issues” that held it back from communicating information needed to securely fly planes, the organization said.
“While Southwest Teams and the vendor worked to restore connectivity, we implemented a ground stop to protect the Safety of our Crews and Customers,” Southwest added.
As per the flight tracking service FlightAware, Southwest postponed in excess of 1,500 trips on Monday and dropped 45. Passengers documented the ground stop via social media, tweeting pictures of planes looking out for runways and sharing stories of disembarking from airplane that had already pulled away from the gate.
“2 hours on plane from boarding to deplaning. About an hour more waiting at the gate for all-clear and re-boarding,” one passenger tweeted about his experience.
The issue seemed to have been resolved on Monday. In any case, the airline experienced another difficulty Tuesday, when it asked the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a ground stop because of another disruption.
In new statement, Southwest said the “brief pause” in flight activity was brought about by “intermittent performance issues with our network connectivity Tuesday afternoon.” In its own assertion, the FAA said Southwest was experiencing “a reservation computer issue.”
The organization additionally said it “proactively canceled” approximately 500 flights because of the blackout, and is working with clients to get them to their destinations. As indicated by Flight Aware, an extra 1,200 flights were postponed on Tuesday. Travelers reported the subsequent disorder in certain cities, sharing pictures of stuffed air terminals and flight arrival displays loaded up with delays.
This isn’t the first time technical issues have caused flight postponements and cancellations. Simply last month, a Saber flight-booking system failed, causing delays on JetBlue and different aircrafts across the globe. At the point when the Government Accountability Office examined these kinds of airline technical disruptions between 2015 and 2017, they discovered they happened more than once per month.