More than 2,100 Southwest flights delayed nationwide following "data connection issues"
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Southwest Airlines is again making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Just months after an operation failure derailed travel plans for millions during the holidays, another technical issue delayed hundreds of flights on Tuesday.
All of the airline's flights were grounded around 9:30 a.m., after a technical problem, and while their flights were back up and running shortly after 10 a.m., hundreds of flights had already been delayed. As of 3:30 p.m., more than 2,100 flights had been delayed, a little more than half of the airline's schedule for the day, and it's going to take a while to catch up.
It had a big impact at Midway International Airport, where Southwest is the dominant airline. According to the Chicago Department of Aviation, 282 flights at Midway have been delayed on Tuesday, out of 580 total flights.
Many of Southwest's flights at Midway were back on track Tuesday evening, but the glitch once again put a spotlight on the airline, leaving some travelers wondering if they learned anything from their infamous holiday fiasco in December.
"I thought they had the problem fixed. So it's here we go again," Vanessa Morrison said.
Morrison knew it wasn't good news when she received a slew of automated text messages from Southwest on Tuesday morning.
"I was supposed to leave at 1 o'clock. It got pushed back to almost 4 o'clock, So I will probably get me something to eat. I've got a book in my purse," she said.
The grandmother, who is traveling back home to Kansas City from Midway, was among the thousands of impacted travelers hit with delays nationwide.
Citing what they called "data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure," Southwest requested a nationwide ground stop for all flights Tuesday morning; an order the FAA lifted a short time later.
The damage, however, was already done.
"We just were planning on being home super early, had a lot of stuff to do today, and then just pushed back two hours," Mandy Brown said.
Fellow traveler Will Little called it "super, super frustrating."
CBS News senior travel advisor Peter Greenberg said, "The optics are never good when you cancel everybody's flight. It's the one thing that gets Congress' attention."
In the eyes of many, Southwest is still rehabbing its reputation just 4 months after a colossal operational meltdown led the airline to cancel more than 16,000 flights over the holiday travel rush.
So what went wrong on Tuesday?
Greenberg said Tuesday's travel hiccup for Southwest shows they're working on their software issues, but just not at the pace of customer expectations.
"At this point, they're trying to implement new systems, effectively backup systems, so that it could seamlessly go to a backup if the primary system fails. We're not there yet," he said.
Despite the delays that happened across the country, the flight data website Flight Aware reports that only 13 Southwest flights were canceled nationwide on Tuesday.
