April 18 (UPI) — Hundreds of flights were delayed Tuesday after the Federal Aviation Administration briefly issued a ground stop for Southwest Airlines flights nationwide due to a technical issue.
According to airline travel tracking website FlightAware.com, 36% of Southwest’s flights were delayed Tuesday morning as a result of the ground stoppage. The carrier, though, managed not to cancel any flights.
The FAA warned of the stoppage at 10:36 a.m. EDT and issued a Twitter post at 11:10 a.m. stating that the pause had been removed.
“This morning [Southwest Airlines] experienced a technical issue with one of their internal systems,” the FAA said in its message. “At the airline’s request, the FAA paused Southwest’s departures as they resolved the issue. The pause has been lifted and their service has resumed.”
Southwest tweeted at 11:35 a.m. that it had resumed operations.
“Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost. Southwest teams worked quickly to minimize flight disruptions,” the airline said.
Southwest apologized for the inconvenience in a reply to a post on Twitter.
“We have had to implement a ground stop as a result of intermittent issues that were experienced, and we should hopefully be resuming our operation as soon as possible,” the carrier said before the pause was lifted. “I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we’ll be here for you if you need any assistance.”
The pause comes as the airline is still overcoming bad publicity from staffing and weather issues at the end of 2022, which caused more than 16,000 flights to be canceled, causing passengers to be stranded across the country during the busy holiday season.
Last month, Southwest Airlines announced staffing increases and equipment additions to avoid in response to the mass cancellations.