Southwest Airlines is flying again after briefly pausing departures Tuesday morning as they worked through an internal technical issue.
The Dallas-based airline told NBC 5 at about 10:30 a.m. that they had resumed operations after temporarily pausing flights due to data connection issues tied to a vendor's firewall failure.
"Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost," the airline said. "Southwest Teams worked quickly to minimize flight disruptions."
At about 9:30 a.m. the Federal Aviation Administration tweeted the airline had asked to pause departures. During the disruption, the airline was responding to travelers online saying "intermittent technology issues" had led to a ground stop but that they hoped to resume operations as soon as possible.
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Just after 10 a.m., the FAA said the airline had worked through an internal technology issue and that the pause on departures had been lifted and service had resumed.
The airline said those travelers affected by the disruption Tuesday can check the status of their flights online or visit with a customer service agent at the airport.
On the positive side, Southwest had only about a dozen flights canceled, roughly in line with other major airlines, according to FlightAware.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg retweeted an FAA post about the ground stop, adding, “We are here to ensure passengers have strong protections when airline failures like this affect their plans.” He referred travelers to a Transportation Department checklist of passenger rights, and his press secretary noted that “no other airlines experienced disruptions.”
Tuesday's delays added to the picture of an airline that has struggled more than most with technology issues.
“It was a 17-minute ground stop. This will have no long-lasting effect on Southwest’s reputation,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst with Atmosphere Research Group. “What matters now for Southwest is getting to the cause and doing all it can to ensure incidents like this don’t occur again.”
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."
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.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who led that hearing, said Tuesday's breakdown “is another demonstration that Southwest Airlines needs to upgrade their systems and stop the negative impacts to individual travelers.”
The airline’s unions have said they warned management about problems with the crew-scheduling system after a previous meltdown in October 2021.
Jordan has embarked on a campaign to repair the airline's damaged reputation. Southwest said last month it would add deicing equipment and increase staffing during winter weather that is cold enough to limit the amount of time that ground workers can stay outside.
Shares of Southwest Airlines Co. fell Tuesday nearly 1% while its closest rivals — American, Delta and United — all gained at least 1.5%.
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