A Southwest 737 at LaGuardia Airport in N.Y.
Southwest Airlines, the nation’s third largest carrier, was forced to ground flights across the country Tuesday for the second time in less than 24 hours, amidst reports of nationwide computer issues.
The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounded Southwest flights due to a “reservation computer issue,” the agency said in a statement.
As of 2:30 p.m. CDT, the airline said that working to restore “normal operations.”
“We are in the process of resuming normal operations after a system issue this afternoon that created flight disruptions throughout our network,” Southwest said in a tweet. “We know many customers still require assistance and are working to address those concerns as quickly as possible.”
“Our teams are working quickly to minimize flight disruptions and customer impact,” the airline said in the statement. “We appreciate our customers’ patience as we work to get them to their destinations.”
The two meltdowns coincidentally took place around the time of the airline’s 50th anniversary, which is in three days on June 18.
The issue came only hours after what the airline termed “intermittent performance issues” with a third-party weather application forced a similar halt to operations Monday night.
Passengers voiced their frustrations at the delays as well as the wait time to get through to customer service in social media.
“Lines to ge to help at @SouthwestAir customer service are crazy and phone wait time is 120 mins,” said a Twitter user named Robert.
One Twitter user took a more light-hearted approach to his tweet.
“’Flight disruptions’ because that what you want to hear right before you take off,” wrote the user JWalker
The airline, which had posted 1,398 flight delays Monday night, had 1,414 delays and 489 cancellations on Tuesday, according to the website FlightAware, which tracks such data.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
