Southwest Airlines faces delays and concerns over network strength.
Southwest Airlines experienced a technical issue with its firewall system, leading to a nationwide grounding of its planes for over an hour and causing more than 1,900 delays and cancellations. The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the pause at 11:10am, revealing the order was issued at the airline’s request while staffers worked to resolve 'data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure.' This comes just weeks after the airline promised to invest over $1 billion to upgrade its IT system following a similar system outage in December 2020.