Southwest Airlines was forced to ground at least 250 flights for nearly three hours on Friday night due to a system-wide computer glitch. Airline operations were able to return to normal by Saturday afternoon but some flights were also canceled.
A computer problem was detected at around 11 p.m. on Friday according to Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins. The airline was unable to do things like conduct check-ins, print boarding passes and weigh each aircraft. Some flights that were on the taxiway had to go back to the gate but flights that were already in the air were not impacted, the Associated Press reports.
Due to the problem, 43 flights were canceled on Friday on the country's largest domestic carrier and another 14 were canceled on Saturday morning. Most of Friday's canceled flights were on the western half of the country, Southwest spokeswoman Michelle Agnew said. Saturday's cancellations were more spread out. Planes leaving from Minneapolis, Chicago, Phoenix, Denver and San Diego, were impacted.
By 2 a.m. on Saturday, full service was restored but there were still some ongoing delays in the morning as the Dallas-based airline had to clear a backlog of flights and repositions its planes and crew members. The airline updated its Twitter saying, "systems are operating and we will begin work to get customers where they need to be. Thanks for your patience tonight."
According to Agnew, the computer system was "running at full capacity" by early Saturday. The airport attempted to use a backup system before that to solve some of the issues but it is much slower.
Southwest isn't the only airline to ground flights due to a computer problem. This problem was minor compared to the glitch that grounded 970 American Airlines flights in April. Last year, United Airlines also had two major outages. A problem in August delayed 580 flights and one in November delayed 636 flights.
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