ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) – An internet outage caused Southwest Airlines flights to be changed or delayed on Thursday.
“I am headed to Cleveland and the notification I got from Southwest was through text message and it was that my flight was delayed about an hour,” said Robbie Kohart.
“Southwest Airlines temporarily paused departures this afternoon due to a brief internet outage that affected the airline’s dispatching and operations system. The system has been restored and departures are resuming. We apologize to our Customers for any inconvenience. Nothing is more important to Southwest than the Safety of our Customers and Employees,” read the airline’s statement.
Some passengers had already boarded their plane when the internet went out and all departures were halted.
“We were about to take off and it was delayed. We were told to stay on the plane for a little while. And then they asked us all to leave, get off the plane,” said Amy Webber.
The arrival and departures boards didn’t list flights as delayed, instead they listed both the original times and new times for departure and arrival. Some flights were delayed two or more hours.
“It’s going to get everything very, very late to where I’m getting in to D.C. So I’m a little disappointed about that,” said Cecilia George.
The delays might be having a ripple effect. Nearly 40% of Southwest Airlines flights nationwide are delayed.
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