Southwest Airlines' Computer Glitch Causes FAA to Issue Ground Stop on Its Flights
Update: As of 9:15am EST Thursday, Southwest's website is back up and running. According to the carrier, most of the systems are back online this morning following yesterday's outages. However, recovery will take some time, so if you're flying with Southwest in the next few days, it's best to call ahead and make sure there are no cancellations or delays. Southwest reportedly canceled or delayed 700 flights on Wednesday.
Southwest is having some issues today and travelers — already at the airport or trying to book trips online — are seeing the impact first-hand. According to Southwest, the airline "began experiencing intermittent performance issues earlier this afternoon with multiple technology systems as a result of an outage."
An FAA ground stop was issued this afternoon for all Southwest Airlines flights. However, there are now several reports that the ground stop has been lifted at certain airports.
The homepage for the carrier is seeing the impact as well. It appears the issues are for all Southwest's computers, causing massive delays in several major cities like Chicago, Dallas, Nashville and Baltimore.
Since I began to write this post, Southwest has added the ability for passengers to check their flight status and check in for flights from the homepage of its otherwise-dysfunctional website.
If you have a Southwest Airlines flight scheduled for today, it's best to call the carrier to make sure it isn't impacted by this issue before heading to the airport.
This situation is developing. Stay tuned for full details.