LIHU‘E — Southwest Airlines, which provides passenger service to and from Lihu‘e Airport, grounded its planes at some airports for a short while on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, because of a technical issue.
LIHU‘E — Southwest Airlines, which provides passenger service to and from Lihu‘e Airport, grounded its planes at some airports for a short while on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, because of a technical issue.
“Southwest has resumed operations after temporarily pausing flight activity this morning to work through data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure. Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost,” the air carrier said in a statement.
“Southwest teams worked quickly to minimize flight disruptions. We ask that travelers use Southwest.com to check flight status or visit a Southwest Airlines customer service agent at the airport for assistance with travel needs. We appreciated the patience of our customers and employees during this morning’s brief disruption.”
More than 2,200 Southwest flights were delayed, or 53 percent of its scheduled flights, as of 11:45 a.m. HST on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, according to data from FlightAware. That included a scheduled morning flight to Honolulu from Lihu‘e, which was delayed for 47 minutes.
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed the situation with Southwest in a Tweet.
“This morning @SouthwestAir experienced a technical issue with one of their internal systems,” the FAA said. “At the airline’s request, the FAA paused Southwest’s departures as they resolved the issue. The pause has been lifted and their service has resumed.”
The disruption comes a few months after Southwest Airlines canceled thousands of flights during the Christmas holiday season because of severe weather that upended its flight schedules and stranded millions of passengers.
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Wyatt Haupt Jr., editor, can be reached at 808-245-0457 or whaupt@thegardenisland.com.
