Southwest Airlines had a glitch with a data stream from a weather provider last night, forcing the airline to ground their entire fleet throughout the United States. The outage first hit around 9pm ET Monday, with the system partially back online by midnight. Southwest is in the process of returning normal flight operations to their fleet.
In a statement released to the media, Southwest Airlines said this morning that it had implemented a groundstop due to “intermittent performance issues” from a third-party weather data provider. The glitch prevented pilots from receiving essential weather information required to safely fly the aircraft.
The identity of the third party weather data provider was not identified.
Late Monday night, Southwest addressed the issue in a statement. “We are beginning to resume flight operations after our third-party weather data provider experienced intermittent performance issues earlier this evening preventing transmission of weather information that is required to safely operate our aircraft. While Southwest Teams and the vendor worked to restore connectivity, we implemented a ground stop to protect the Safety of our Crews and Customers. We appreciate our Customers’ patience as we work to get them to their destinations as quickly as possible. We ask that Customers use Southwest.com to check flight status or, if flying this evening, consult a Southwest Airlines Customer Service Agent for assistance with travel needs.”
