Massive delays from Southwest Airlines have been reported. The root cause of the delay was a widespread computer outage that affected major flights everywhere and almost all flights out of its Chicago site were already grounded.
Across the United States, flights from Southwest Airlines were held up starting Wednesday as the ground crew continued to fix issues behind the company's technology section. Brad Hawkins, the spokeperson for Southwest Airlines, explained that the company has been having intermittent problems that has affected several systems after it experienced a major outage.
"We are now managing flight delays across our system, with a temporary ground stop in place for those flights that have not left the gate," Hawkins explained. Because of this issue, the company has issued a nationwide ground stop for all departing flights. This means major flights that were to depart on Wednesday were grounded and cancelled. Future flights are still pending further announcement.
But some Southwest hubs are coming back online but are not fully functional. Even the check-in and baggage systems were down and passengers needed to manually check in with paper tickets. The Airline might need more time before normal operations can resume.
"We are now managing flight delays across our system, with a temporary ground stop in place for those flights that have not left the gate. We apologize to our Customers whose travel plans are impacted", announced the company on their official Twitter page.
Anxious customers are waiting for their flights to resume and take off. Some are still waiting to be serviced for check in. While others are still trying to get into Southwest Airline's website.
There is no estimated time as to when Southwest Airlines will start to operate normally but the aviation company is trying its best to service its customers and resume operations in a careful manner.
