Hundreds of Southwest Airlines flights in the U.S. were disrupted this morning due to an "intermittent technology issue," according to the airline.
As of noon ET Tuesday, Southwest had resumed operations, attributing the pause to "data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure."
- The Federal Aviation Administration imposed and later lifted a nationwide ground for the carrier's flights on Tuesday.
- Southwest later said it lost some operational data after a vendor-supplied firewall went down.
- The issues caused delays of at least 1,200 flights, or 30% of the airline's schedule.
- The ground stop comes after Southwest experienced a wave of delays and cancellations in December that was partially attributed to outdated scheduling software.
- At the time, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said it has issued warnings for years about the out-of-date technology but was ignored.
- The airline has since committed more than $1B of its yearly operating budget to IT and other technology upgrades.
