Southwest Airlines Cancels 500 Flights After Computer Glitch Grounds Fleet

Southwest Airlines said on Tuesday it canceled about 500 flights and delayed hundreds of others after it was forced to temporarily halt operations over a computer issue -- the second time in 24 hours it had been forced to stop flights. From a report: The Federal Aviation Administration said it had issued a temporary nationwide groundstop at the request of Southwest Airlines to resolve a computer reservation issue. The groundstop lasted about 45 minutes, and ended at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT), it said. Southwest said its operations were returning to normal. The issue was the result of "intermittent performance issues with our network connectivity." Southwest delayed nearly 1,300 flights on Tuesday, or 37% of its flights, according to flight tracker FlightAware.

off and on

[darkain]

Have you tried turning the plane off and back on again?

Re:off and on

[stephanruby]

It's not called the 738-MAX anymore.

It's now the 737-8 (not be confused with the 737-800 which is an older model).

Re:off and on

[BeerFartMoron]

You joke, but the 787's must to restarted every 51 days [theregister.com].

Re:

[dunkelfalke]

Nope. 737 MAX is the family, 737-8 is a specific model of that family - 170 to 200 passengers or so, essentially the most common model. There is also a smaller 737-7 and a larger 737-9. These designations are probably older than the MAX moniker. The NG was similar, 737-600, 700, 800, 900.
The classic was 737-300, 400 and 500, with the 500 being the smallest, for some reason, and the jurassic was 737-100 and 200.

Re:off and on

[Applehu Akbar]

Don’t pay the ransom this time, dammit!

Re:

[kippswanson]

I'm calling to talk to you about your plane's extended warranty...

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You only need to do that with Boeings. [theregister.com]

ISP issues LOL

[cygnusvis]

Switch to star link they said...

Well, clearly!

[Randseed]

Clearly, I have the utmost confidence in Southwest Airlines to jet me around at 40,000 feet when they can't even get a terrestrial computer system to work. Let's go sit on a plane, wearing masks, in 115 degree heat in Vegas. Vegas, baby! Yet more evidence these things are a big series of death tubes.

Re:

[Nrrqshrr]

Can't wait for when the majority of the cars and trucks out there are on autopilot and then an oopsie with the computers happens. This time it was grounded planes, next time it will be crashing vehicles.

Re:

[olsmeister]

FSD vehicles do not require network connectivity to operate.

Re:

[darkain]

YET! :-O

Re:

[groobly]

Exactly! Self-driving cars will work much more efficiently if they are networked, for example, allowing closer spacing. Computer crash = car crash.

Re:

[Viol8]

Personally I would ONLY ride in one without it. I don't need some pasty faced hacker pissing about inside the ECU when its doing 70mph down the highway. But hey, if you feel more secure knowing the vehicle could potentially be under outside control then knock yourself out.

Re:

[cmseagle]

Maintaining an aircraft and maintaining an airline booking system are two separate competencies. It's possible to be good at one and bad at the other. And it's not like Southwest is developing the software that runs their 737s.

Re:

[Ed Tice]

Although they still might do better than Boeing!

Just let people on

[aberglas]

If your reservation system dies, just trust passengers to say they have a ticket and let them on. A few will slip though, but much better than shutting everything down.

Re:Just let people on

[sinij]

I think reservation system in this case handles much more than just passenger registration. Plus, what you suggest is likely explicitly against FAA rules.

Re:

[rsilvergun]

I don't think you can do that for security reasons.

Re:Just let people on

[arosenfield]

Paper tickets can still be used as backup.

In 2015, I was flying on Alaska when their computer systems went down. Thankfully I got to the airport plenty early that day. I wasn't able to check in online the night before, nor were their automated kiosks able to check me, so I spoke with a human at the checkin area who told me the computers were down. He had a cached copy of the flight manifest on his laptop, and he hand-wrote me a paper boarding pass. I went through security with that no problem.

While waiting at the gate, about 30 minutes prior to the scheduled departure they announced that their computer systems came back and asked anyone with a hand-written boarding pass to exchange it for a real printed boarding pass. It took off only a tad behind schedule.

Re:

[k6mfw]

Reminds me when the cafeteria registers went belly up (they're all tied to a central system) during the morning. They tried rebooting but it quickly became apparent it will take time and the lines were getting long, so they just said "don't bother, it's free." Lunchtime came around, system still down but the grill was still working along with the deli bar. So the lunch was free. Of course we have well behaved employees that understand not appropriate to game the system during this glitch.

Can't blame BTC on this one!

[DrMrLordX]

At least they didn't have to pay a ransom.

It isn't over yet

[TeeDub]

I have a coworker that was supposed to fly into Chicago this morning. His direct flight was cancelled again, as was the afternoon one.

Re:

[A10Mechanic]

Even after the initial event is ended, there is a cascading ripple effect that spills over due to aircraft not being at their new destinations due to not flying-in the night before. It can take days to swap spit and get everything back on track, with pilots, flight crews, and jets.