Southwest Airlines’ technological and administrative issues continue as they were forced to ground all of their flights early this morning.
A “data connection issue resulting from a firewall failure” led to a brief flight stop that canceled only nine flights across the US, but led to a delay of 41% of its schedule.
And by afternoon on the East Coast, Southwest delays accounted for over half of all delays nationwide.
A spokesman explained the situation in a statement saying, “Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost.”
But Southwest is known for its operational issues as today’s grounding comes only months after electronic tracking system issues over the holidays led Southwest to cancel 5,400 flights over the course of 48 hours.
Now those cancellations are being investigated by the Transportation Department and have cost the airline more than $1 billion.
Check out the video below to see more on Southwest Airlines grounding flights early this morning:
Featured image from Southwest Airlines
