Southwest Airlines flights resume after brief ground stop Tuesday morning, per FAA

Southwest Airlines suffered another meltdown Tuesday morning as a ground stop — an action barring the airline’s planes from taking off — stranded travelers throughout the country, and was later confirmed by the Federal Aviation Administration.

According to the FAA, Southwest experienced technical issues with their internal systems and a pause to its departures was granted “at the airline’s request.” Reports of the problems began around 7 a.m. PDT; the FAA said that the pause had been lifted as of 8:10 a.m.

This morning @SouthwestAir experienced a technical issue with one of their internal systems.

At the airline’s request, the FAA paused Southwest’s departures as they resolved the issue.

The pause has been lifted and their service has resumed.

— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) April 18, 2023

“Southwest has resumed operations after temporarily pausing flight activity this morning to work through data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure,” the airline told Bay Area News Group in an email at 8:13 a.m. “Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost. Southwest Teams worked quickly to minimize flight disruptions.”

The company added that further flights could be delayed as a consequence of the issues.

The official Southwest Airlines Twitter account replied to a flurry of complaints Tuesday morning amid reports that there was a stoppage due to technical issues.

Twitter user @FennerMichelle said she was sitting in a plane “waiting for computers to come back” when the airline replied with news of a stoppage.

“We have had to implement a ground stop as a result of intermittent issues that were experienced, and we should hopefully be resuming our operation as soon as possible,” a company employee wrote in reply. “I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we’ll be here for you if you need any assistance.”