Southwest Airlines Just Cancelled 500 Flights For an Alarming Reason

It was yesterday that Southwest Airlines cancelled 500 flights, or 15% of its schedule, as the airline struggle with technological issues.

It’s now been two days of technical problems and connectivity issues for Southwest. On Monday a weather data supplier had delayed hundreds of flights.

The Federal Aviation Administration briefly issued a nationwide ground stop for the airline, which prevents its flights from taking off to avoid overwhelming destinations.

Over 1,690 Southwest flights were delayed on Tuesday, close to half of the carrier’s schedule, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. On Monday, 1,541 Southwest flights, about 41% of its schedule, were delayed, according to FlightAware.

The airline said operations were returning to normal by Tuesday afternoon.

“Southwest is in the process of resuming normal operations after a brief pause in our flight activity resulting from intermittent performance issues with our network connectivity Tuesday afternoon,” Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz said. “Our Teams are working quickly to minimize flight disruptions and Customer impact. We appreciate our Customers’ patience as we work to get them to their destinations.”

The company is investigating the issue and doesn’t have reason to believe Tuesday’s issue was connected to Monday’s problem.

Denver International Airport had tweeted that Southwest was having a “network connectivity issue” and warned travelers that flight delays are likely.

Southwest said its operations were disrupted Monday evening after its “third-party weather provider experienced intermittent performance issues” but told employees earlier Tuesday that it was in “relatively good shape” as operations resumed.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.