The Federal Aviation Administration says Southwest Airlines has asked to pause departures as they work through reported “intermittent technology issues.”
The Dallas-based airline is responding to travelers on Twitter saying the technology issue led to a ground stop and that they hope to resume operations as soon as possible, though they didn’t say when they expected things to return to normal.
Southwest has not specified what the technology issue is.
At 9:55 a.m., data from Flight Aware shows departure delays at Dallas Love Field are 27 minutes and decreasing with inbound flights being held at their origin until 10:45 a.m. Flight Aware also showed Southwest Airlines flights departing Love Field, so some flights are departing though they are departing late.
The delays come almost four months after the airline struggled to recover from a winter storm. The storm arrived just before Christmas and caused chaos across the airline industry, but Southwest took longer to recover than any of its rivals, as a crew-scheduling system was unable to keep up. The airline wound up canceling 16,700 flights in late December. The airline said the breakdown cost it about $800 million in lost revenue in the fourth quarter and up to $350 million more early this year.
Southwest CEO Robert Jordan has apologized several times for the holiday meltdown, and the airline has announced steps to avoid a repeat, including adding more deicing equipment and staff at key airports and improving its crew-scheduling technology.
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