Southwest Airlines flights were delayed and canceled early Saturday morning.
In a statement to Fox Business, the airline cited “intermittent performance issues following routine overnight maintenance of some of [its] technologie back-end.
“We sincerely apologize to our customers for any inconvenience and our gratitude to our employees who are working diligently to make up for it,” the airline wrote. “We will continue to notify customers whose travel with us today may be delayed due to the now resolved issues.”
FlightAware flight tracking showed more than a thousand flights delayed on Southwest shortly following 9 a.m. ET, with 179 cancellations.
Passengers reacted to the changes on social media, responding to a Friday April Fool’s Day tweet from Southwest.
“Do you want a joke? Baggage fees,” the @SouthwestAir account noted.
“It’s a bit in bad taste to make a joke on Twitter when apparently all flights today are delayed,” Fox 61 meteorologist Ryan Breton said. responded.
Others shared stories of long customer service calls, double cancellations and sky-high airfares.
Airline ticket prices have risen due to increased travel, and already high fuel costs have been pushed up further by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
KPRC 2 in Houston, Texas, reported on Saturday that the source of the delays was a “planned system outage” and that a Houston airports spokesperson told the station that the airlines’ system was down during two hours, starting at 4 a.m. local time.
North Carolina’s WNCN said the “national system outage” caused delays at Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
Fox Business’ Edward Lawrence was at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, and tweeted regarding it.
“Update: Gate Agents stating @SouthwestAir system is back. They are starting to try to catch up with baggage checks and boarding,” he said. wrote à 6 h 57 HE.
