Southwest Airlines grounding creates delays for travelers

DALLAS — Southwest Airlines planes were briefly grounded nationwide Tuesday for what the airline called an intermittent technology issue, leading to more than 1,800 delayed flights just four months after the carrier suffered a much bigger meltdown over the Christmas travel rush.

Nearly half of all flights out of Boston Logan International Airport were delayed late Tuesday morning, according to FlightAware.

The hold on departures was lifted by late morning, according to Southwest and the Federal Aviation Administration, but not before traffic at airports from Denver to New York City backed up.

“Southwest has resumed operations after temporarily pausing flight activity this morning to work through data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure,” the Dallas-based airline said in a prepared statement. “Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost.”

Southwest urged customers to check on their flight status “and explore self-service options” for travel as the airline worked on restoring its operation.

By midday on the East Coast, more than 40 percent of all Southwest flights were delayed, and the airline accounted for nearly twothirds of all delays nationwide.

Rob Britton, a former American Airlines executive who teaches crisis management at Georgetown University, said the damage from Tuesday’s incident will be minor but will add to the erosion of Southwest’s image. He said Southwest has underinvested in technology while growing rapidly, and it suffers from an “insular culture” that “keeps them from looking outside for solutions.”