Southwest, Delta, United and other airlines have planes grounded by major computer outage

Andrew Griffin
Monday 01 April 2019 08:31 EDT
Comments
Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX aircraft are parked on the tarmac after being grounded, at the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California on March 28, 2019
Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX aircraft are parked on the tarmac after being grounded, at the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California on March 28, 2019 (MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Flights in the US are being hit by major delays and troubles after a computer outage at many of the country's largest airlines.

Southwest, Delta, United and other airlines have been hit by the problem, which is reported to be linked to a network issue.

On Twitter, Southwest Airlines claimed that the network outage had been fixed. But problems are still ongoing as a result of the technical fault, travellers reported.

The airline described the problems as "tech-related", saying it was still working through them.

Customer service agents at affected airports would pass out information as it became available, it said.

"It's affecting our flights system wide, and we're working to see if it's affecting any other carriers this morning as well," one tweet from Southwest read. "In the meantime, once more information has been made available our Agents at the airport will be happy to disseminate it to y'all."

United Airlines wrote on Twitter that the problem was stopping it from generating paperwork.

The Federal Aviation Authority said the problem was being caused by "a flight planning weight and balance program called Aerodata".

"Mainline operations and regional operations are impacted to varying degrees," it said in a statement.

The issues come just days after a similar IT outage caused problems for US airlines. Though that problem was quickly resolved it also had a knock-on effect that saw planes across the country delayed.

And it happens amid the technical problems with Boeing 737 Max planes, which has led them to be grounded across the US.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in