NEWS: Thousands of Southwest Airlines Flights Grounded This Morning

If you’re flying, you need to be prepared for the unexpected.

Sometimes things run behind and flights get delayed or canceled. Sometimes weather affects the travel schedule. Sometimes there are unexpected maintenance issues. Basically, there are plenty of reasons why you could have your travel not go according to plan…and today might be one of those days!

WESH 2 Orlando reports that all Southwest Airlines flights have been grounded nationwide today. The airline requested that the FAA pause all departures on Tuesday, April 18th.

Southwest released a statement, saying, “As a result of the intermittent technology issues that we experienced, we should hopefully be resuming our operation as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we’re hoping to get everyone going ASAP.” According to FlightAware, more than 1200 Southwest flights have been delayed.

Currently, Southwest doesn’t have a projected timeframe for when this issue will be resolved. This mass grounding of flights comes after Southwest Airlines experienced big issues with winter weather and technology back in December 2022 — a problem that forced the company to cancel thousands of flights during peak holiday travel times.

UPDATE: After 30 minutes of downtime, the ground stop has been canceled for Southwest Airlines. Flight departures are now back up and running.