All Southwest Airlines departures were halted in the United States on April 18, but the pause was later lifted.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) implemented the nationwide ground stop at the request of Southwest Airlines, a spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.
The ground stop was lifted around 11:15 a.m. Eastern time.
Southwest described dealing with technical issues.
“Southwest has resumed operations after temporarily pausing flight activity this morning to work through data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. “Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost. Southwest teams worked quickly to minimize flight disruptions.”…