Southwest Airlines’ entire fleet GROUNDED after weather system crashes leaving thousands stranded and stuck on runways
SOUTHWEST Airline's entire fleet was grounded on Monday night after a weather system crash left thousands stranded and stuck on runways.
The airline confirmed in a statement to The Sun that flights were beginning to resume just after midnight EST.
People began complaining of grounded planes and being stranded on tarmacs from Phoenix to Las Vegas to Baltimore around 10pm EST.
"We are beginning to resume flight operations after our third-party weather data provider experienced intermittent performance issues earlier this evening preventing transmission of weather information that is required to safely operate our aircraft," a spokesperson for the airline said.
"While Southwest Teams and the vendor worked to restore connectivity, we implemented a ground stop to protect the Safety of our Crews and Customers."
While planes were grounded -- some for hours while full of passengers -- Southwest's social media team scrambled to address complaints on Twitter.
One representative explained that a "system error" was affecting flights and teams were working to get those addressed as soon as possible.
"It seems that we are experiencing a system error, and we are trying our best to get the situation resolved ASAP," a rep named Gabriel wrote.
A Twitter used named Justin Searls tweeted at the airline about the outages.
"So 's weather system is down and as a result their entire fleet is grounded due to a requirement that they have a printed weather report before takeoff," he wrote.
"[One hour] on the tarmac in a heatwave because of software is even less fun than most software-created problems. Neat."
The airline thanked the customer for "hanging in there," and noted that the company is "currently experiencing some technical difficulties, and we're working hard to get you on your way ASAP."
Hollywood Burbank Airport confirmed on Twitter that Southwest Airlines suspended all departures from the airport due to the network issues.
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"Southwest Airlines has suspended all departures from Hollywood Burbank Airport due to <nationwide> network issues," .
Denver International Airport responded to several people tweeting about being stuck on Southwest flights on the tarmac for hours.
The airport is "aware of a computer issue going on with Southwest," according to the tweet, but no additional information was provided.