Southwest Hit By Major Delays After System Outage

Photo: Aero Icarus

The outage occurred around 1:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday and forced Southwest employees across the country to manually do check-ins, baggage and ticketing, as travelers couldn’t use the Southwest website to buy tickets or check flight status.  

At the time of the outage, Southwest issued a temporary ground stop for planes that had not left their gates, piling up delays for more than 2,000 flights and canceling close to 700 more, according to FlightStatus.  

Spokesperson Linda Rutherford said most of the systems were back online on Thursday morning but “recovery will take some time” and passengers should expect delays—flights from Dallas Love Field, Kansas City International, San Antonio International, Chicago Midway and other airports were all still seeing delays on Thursday morning, and travel professionals report ongoing issues reaching the airline and accessing the systems. 

Huge lines at @SouthwestAir in @IFlyOAKland just to check in bags. Some delays and cancellations this AM. pic.twitter.com/hqhN6x9hKB

— Brian Flores (@BrianFloresKTVU) July 21, 2016

“I want to start off by once again apologizing to our customers and reiterating that your experience throughout the past 24 hours is not the service you should expect from Southwest Airlines,” Rutherford said.  

Southwest is offering “flexible accommodations” for fliers rebooking their travel during the system outage.  

This is the line to rebook canceled flights @SouthwestAir @BWI_Airport Line more than 2 hours @wbaltv11 pic.twitter.com/taUpSQ3ou6

— Jennifer Franciotti (@wbaljfro) July 21, 2016

This is the second major delay caused by a Southwest system outage over the last year. Last October, 800 Southwest flights were delayed when its check-in system went down, forcing employees to manually issue tickets and boarding passes at airports across the country. Flights were back on track 24 hours later.