Southwest Airlines issued "heartfelt apologies" to its customers after technical issues led to nationwide flight delays Tuesday morning, April 18, which were experienced locally at the Palm Springs International Airport with 18 delayed flights.
"Southwest has resumed operations after temporarily pausing flight activity this morning to work through data connection issues. We offer our heartfelt apologies to customers whose journey with us today might be delayed," Southwest officials said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Southwest issued an Operational Update, which announced that flights had resumed and went on to extend its appreciation for customers and employees who had to deal with the "brief disruption."
According to a this update, the airline delayed flights nationwide in order to resolve "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," Southwest Airlines said in the update. "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."
According to the Desert Sun, as many as 1,750 Southwest flights met delays across the nation, all due to the same technical issues. The article cited information from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that Southwest Airlines sought to stop all departures as it worked to restore data connectivity. With its subsequent return to flight service, Southwest Airlines is offering to reschedule flights without charge within 14 days of the delays for anyone inconvenienced by the flight issues.
According to Palm Desert Patch, all the the Southwest flights at Palm Springs International Airport eventually took off for their destinations, although delays set back departing flights until after 3 p.m. and new arrivals until after 4:14 p.m.