Hundreds of Southwest Airlines Flights , Are Delayed After Nationwide Ground Stop Is Lifted.
CNN reports that according to Southwest Airlines, "data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure" led to a temporary ground stop on April 18.
Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost, Dan Landson, Southwest Airlines spokesman, via CNN.
The FAA later lifted the ground stop,
and Southwest tweeted at 11:35 a.m.
that it had resumed operations.
According to FlightAware,
1,728 flights were delayed as a result.
Nine flights were canceled as the airline's employees "worked quickly to minimize disruptions.".
CNN reports that the issues come just
months after Southwest had to cancel
over 16,700 flights from Dec. 20 to Dec. 29.
CNN reports that the airline said alterations "to its staff scheduling computer systems" were to blame.
Last month, the company revealed an
"action plan" to prevent that from happening again