Southwest Airlines Faces Brief Outage, Causing Over 1,300 Flight Delays in the US

Photo : Reuters

Southwest Airlines experienced a power outage at its data center in Texas, causing significant disruptions. On Wednesday, the low-cost US carrier reported that over 1,300 flights were delayed due to the brief computer outage at the Dallas facility.

According to a New York Post report, the power outage disrupted the airline's computer systems, leading to flight delays as officials worked to reboot the systems. "Southwest Airlines has resolved a brief technology issue that was caused by a power outage at one of our data centers in the Dallas area this afternoon," a spokesperson for the airline stated. The spokesperson added, "While we were able to continue overall operations, some flights across the system were delayed while our teams addressed the outage and restarted systems."

Flight Aware, a flight-tracking site, indicated that about 34 percent of Southwest Airlines' scheduled flights on Wednesday—totaling 1,379 flights—were delayed. The airline issued an apology to its customers, expressing appreciation for their patience and emphasizing their commitment to getting passengers to their destinations as quickly and safely as possible.

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This incident occurred less than two years after a harsh winter storm overwhelmed Southwest Airlines' scheduling system, resulting in the cancellation of nearly 17,000 flights during the Christmas holiday period. The crisis affected two million passengers. Following a US government investigation last year, the airline paid $600 million in compensation to passengers and was fined $140 million.

Southwest Airlines continues to work on improving its systems to prevent similar disruptions in the future, aiming to maintain reliable service for its customers.