Technical issues delay Southwest flights

Airline requests a pause to fix problems that hold up at least 2,192 planes, in some cases for hours.

More than 2,100 Southwest Airlines f lights were delayed Tuesday by technical problems with the embattled air carrier’s systems.

The Federal Aviation Administration paused Southwest departures at the airline’s request Tuesday morning while the company worked to resolve “data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure,” a Southwest spokesperson said in a statement.

“Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost,” the statement said.

By 8:10 a.m. Pacific time, the FAA said, service had resumed, although the effects of the pause continued to push back departure times.

At least 2,192 Southwest flights were delayed in the U.S. by 2:25 p.m., representing more than half of its scheduled departures, according to flight tracking service FlightAware.

The delays come after the airline experienced a historic meltdown in December, forcing Southwest to cancel more than half of its flights over a week.

After the disruptions, Chief Commercial Officer Ryan Green pledged that the company “would do everything we can, and work day and night to repair our relationship with you.” Southwest said it would invest more than $1 billion to upgrade its IT system.

Delayed Southwest passengers aired their frustrations with the airline on social media Tuesday.

“I’ve been sitting on a plane from Las Vegas to San Diego for 2 hours waiting for a ‘weather report,’ ” one person wrote on Twitter. “This 45 minute flight will now take 4 hours. What a complete joke and waste of time.”

“Sitting on the tarmac at Midway due to a computer problem causing a @SouthwestAir nationwide ground stop,” another wrote. “Airlines require systems that have 99.999% uptime. Time to install some new IT leadership that takes availability culture seriously.”