Computer Glitch Grounds 25% of Southwest Flights Across U.S.
Joe Cortez October 12, 2015
Southwest claims computer glitch is fixed, but not before stranding thousands of passengers across the U.S.
A computer crash that delayed over 500 Southwest Airlines flights is now fixed, but it may be of little consolation to the thousands of flyers across the country who were affected over the weekend. In a statement published on its website, the Dallas-based carrier apologized for the outage.
“Today we are expecting the technical systems that power our Customer Service to perform normally,” the statement read. “Teams worked throughout the night in advance of our first departures to ensure the smoothest operation of our originating and later flights.”
While the computer problem forced the delay of flights on Sunday, the situation appeared to be completely resolved by Monday morning. As of 11 a.m. ET, FlightAware.com reported zero delays or cancellations among scheduled Southwest flights – down from the nearly 25 percent of flights affected the day before, coupled with long waits reported by flyers.
“The line [for Southwest check-in] is now over a mile and a half,” Robert Kuypers posted on his Instagram account, while documenting everything in video. “Still no water or help from Southwest…people sweating, over heating, babies crying.”
In a statement, Southwest expressed regret over the situation. The airline assured flyers who were unable to travel Sunday or who did not wish to continue their travels on Monday, would be able to change their plans free of charge through the airline’s website.
“It’s never too early to say thank you and to extend our apologies and we want to share those sentiments both with our hard-working Employees and our loyal and understanding Customers, whom we hope to welcome back for a better experience soon,” Southwest wrote in their statement. “We’ll continue to work individually with our affected Customers to make this right.”
This is not the first time this year that an airline’s flights have been grounded by unexpected, widespread computer issues. In March, JetBlue flights were grounded by a “systemwide IT outage,” halting thousands of passengers in their tracks. In July, United Airlines experienced a ground stop after their computers went down for the second time in 2015, affecting as many as 3,500 flights across the U.S.
[Photo: Steve Marcus/AP; Video: Instagram]
Local news reported that flyers at LAX were given pizza and water.
Last I checked, Southwest was and always has been Dallas based.