Southwest Airlines said it was "resuming normal operations" and investigating the cause of the technical problems that halted its departures on Tuesday afternoon.
The outage was the second technical incident in less than 24 hours, and the airline said it was "in the process of investigating the root cause of each event to determine what caused the technical issue."
The airline canceled roughly 500 flights over the problem. Data from the flight tracking website FlightAware reported 966 delays and showed that cancellations and delays combined affected 42% of Southwest's Tuesday schedule.
Partner links: booking through them supports the blog at no extra cost to you.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it had "issued a temporary nationwide ground stop at Southwest Airlines' request while the company worked to resolve an issue with its computerized reservation system."
On Monday evening, the airline's third-party weather data provider experienced disruptions, which led to grounded planes and travel delays across the United States.
Delta and Alaska Airlines also reported computer problems on Monday that affected their ability to sell tickets.
Passengers across the country took to social media to vent their frustration and demand answers after the problem left some people stranded on the ground and stuck locked inside planes.
As the world has returned to pre-pandemic levels of air travel, flights have run into a growing number of problems, with the Federal Aviation Administration reporting 3,000 cases of unruly passenger behavior this year.
Southwest said Monday's technical issue interfered with the transmission of weather information that is essential to operating its aircraft safely.
"While the vendor worked to restore connectivity, we implemented a ground stop to protect the safety of our crews and customers," the statement said.
Southwest said it was working to get every passenger to their destination as quickly as possible.
Passengers Were Delayed and Stranded
Chris Martin, who was traveling on Monday, was delayed more than two hours on a Southwest Airlines flight from San Jose, California, to Austin, Texas.
After tweeting about the airline outage troubles and delays, he said he managed to board his flight, but many others were less fortunate.
"Lining up to board right now, apparently they're releasing the weather documents city by city. This was a 5:55 p.m. departure, and now it's 8:17 p.m.," Martin said. "Twenty-two flights on the board are showing as delayed or canceled."
Jason Goran, another passenger traveling from San Diego, California, to Houston, said he sat on the plane for two hours because of the weather system failure.
"The captain at @SouthwestAir said we can't take off because the weather system for the entire company is down?" Goran wrote on Twitter during the ordeal.
Goran said the flight was supposed to depart at 5:50 p.m. Pacific time. By the time he was speaking, it was 8:17 p.m. Pacific time.
"It looks like we're about to take off," he said at the time. "They called us back onto the plane, but we still haven't pulled away from the gate."
Patrick Miller said that after boarding his flight from Phoenix to Portland, Oregon, passengers had to deplane and then board again. "It took two hours from boarding to deplaning," Miller said.
He also tweeted about his delay, saying: "There's a lot of hate aimed at @SouthwestAir right now, but my flight attendants are handing out water and people are allowed to step off the plane."
People were losing their patience over the delay, he said.
Other passengers, such as Ryan Cesaitis, said they managed to take off and land but ended up stuck on their planes as the problems continued to plague the airline.
Cesaitis, who also shared his experience on Twitter, said he waited on the runway for 90 minutes after landing at Dallas Love Field from Phoenix.
Other Airlines Had Problems Too
Delta said in a statement that its teams were working to quickly resolve a technical issue that had made it harder for customers to buy tickets on Delta.com, in the Fly Delta app, and through the company's reservations call center.
The ability to check in for flights was not affected, according to the statement.
Alaska Airlines also had problems on Monday. In a tweet to a customer, the airline said its "booking page is down. Our team is working hard to resolve this issue."
A message on the Alaska Airlines booking page read: "We are currently experiencing issues that are affecting purchases on alaskaair.com, in our mobile app, and through our contact center. We are actively working with our partner that powers our purchasing platform to resolve the issue. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try again later."
