Airlines
Southwest Airlines Recovers from Latest Schedule Disruption
A computer system firewall failure caused another round of schedule interruptions at Southwest Airlines, according to the company.
Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 landing at at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport
A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 lands at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport in March 2017. (Photo: Flickr: Creative Commons (BY-SA) by TDelCoro)

Southwest Airlines attributed its latest disruption to flight activity Tuesday morning to data connection “issues” resulting from what it called a firewall failure. In a statement to AIN, the airline said a vendor-supplied firewall went down, causing the unexpected loss of some “operational data.” Southwest teams worked quickly to minimize flight disruptions, but not soon enough to allay frustrations on the part of inconvenienced customers.

A tweet posted by the FAA indicated that Southwest asked the agency to pause all departures until it resolved the computer problem. About an hour later, the FAA lifted the pause at Southwest’s request.