The Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday morning it had halted Southwest Airlines flights at the airline’s request and the company said it was working to resolve technical issues.
The disruption comes just a few months after a collapse around the Christmas holiday that has cost Southwest more than $1 billion, frustrated millions of travelers and drawn close scrutiny from federal lawmakers and regulators.
The airline said it has taken numerous steps in recent months to prevent another widespread outage, including more closely monitoring its network for early signs of stress, updating crew scheduling software and training employees to assist with operations when necessary.
The airline had canceled some flights by mid-morning Tuesday, but more than 1,200 of its flights were delayed, about 30 percent off the schedule for the day, according to FlightAware, an aeronautical data company.
“Due to the intermittent technology issues we were experiencing, we should hopefully resume operations as soon as possible,” the airline said in a statement on Twitter.
The FAA referred additional questions to Southwest. The airline did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Southwest is expected to report financial results for the first three months of the year next week.
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