Southwest flights resume after brief ground stoppage due to technical issue

SOUTHWEST Airlines flights were resuming on Tuesday (Apr 18) after lifting a brief nationwide stoppage caused by an internal technical issue, the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) said.

Shares of the airline fell 1.3 per cent in morning trade on Tuesday.

Southwest did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“Southwest Airlines pause on departures has been fully cancelled,” the FAA said in a statement. “Earlier this morning, Southwest requested that FAA pause Southwest departures due to an internal technical issue at Southwest.”

The Dallas-based carrier has come under fire ever since a staffing crisis due to bad weather during the Christmas holidays overwhelmed its crew scheduling software, disrupting travel plans for two million customers.

“We’re aware of intermittent issues with our website and mobile app, but we’re working hard in making sure our customers have full capabilities on our site,” Southwest said in a reply to a customer on Twitter.

The company cancelled over 16,700 flights between Christmas and New Year’s Eve 2022 due to a tech meltdown. During winter storm Elliott, Southwest’s crew scheduling software failed to bear the load of staffing changes made by the airline and workers had to manually match crew and planes that led to huge waiting times for pilots and cabin crew.

The airline reported a loss in the fourth quarter, suffering a revenue hit of US$410 million and a US$390 million jump in operating expenses due to the flight cancellations. It said in January that first-quarter revenue would be hit by between US$300 million and US$350 million. REUTERS