More Cancellations, Delays As Southwest Airlines Struggles To Recover From “Technology Issues” – CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — Computer system outages caused Southwest Airlines to ground hundreds of flights two days in a row. On the third consecutive day, June 16, passengers continued to deal with canceled flights and delays, as the airline tried to recover.

As of midmorning Central time, Dallas-based Southwest had canceled nearly 300 flights and more than 400 were delayed, according to tracking service FlightAware. Combined, that’s about one-fifth of the airline’s schedule for Wednesday.

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Passengers took to Twitter to complain about long delays — and also to report that Southwest’s online sweepstakes promotion didn’t seem to be working either.

A Southwest spokesman said the airline fixed what it termed a network-connectivity issue that cropped up Tuesday but was still experiencing cancelations and delays as it worked to resume normal operations.

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While Southwest’s problems on Wednesday were far more extensive than at other U.S. airlines — American canceled about 40 flights and delayed nearly 90 more, according to FlightAware — it was an improvement over the previous two days.

A problem with weather data supplied by a contractor caused Southwest to delay about 1,500 flights Monday. On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration briefly grounded Southwest flights and the airline canceled about 560 flights and delayed 1,800 more over the network issue.

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