Southwest Airlines resumes operations after tech issues halt departures
Southwest Airlines was plagued by technology issues during December holiday season
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Southwest Airlines resumed all departures Tuesday morning after "intermittent technology issues" briefly impacted its operations.
Southwest told FOX Business that the airline was forced to temporarily pause flight activity in order to "work through data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure."
According to the Dallas-based carrier, a vendor-supplied firewall went down early Tuesday morning and as a result, "connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost."
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Southwest said its employees worked quickly to minimize disruptions, which amounted to more than 1,700 delayed flights as of 11:30 a.m. ET, according to FlightAware.
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Just after 11 a.m. ET, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a tweet that Southwest's temporary pause on all departures had lifted, and that service resumed.
The update from the FAA came roughly a half hour after the agency first announced that the carrier "requested the FAA pause the airline’s departures."
Southwest is still trying to repair its reputation after an operational meltdown in December led to nearly 17,000 canceled flights and displaced millions of passengers during the holidays.
Disruptions for several major airlines started when the Christmas weekend winter storm hit. While other major domestic carriers recovered after the storm passed, Southwest's problems got worse. Its outdated crew-scheduling technology was overwhelmed and as a result, crews and planes were out of position to operate flights.
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Southwest Airlines COO Andrew Watterson told a Senate Commerce Committee that the carrier didn't have "enough resiliency" in its operation when harsher-than-expected winter weather slammed "key airports."