Multiple Airlines Grounded by ‘Systemwide’ Computer Glitches

JetBlue, Delta, United, American, Southwest, and Alaska Airlines all reportedly experienced “systemwide outages” across multiple U.S. airports, Monday, which led to the grounding of flights. The FAA has said a flight planning weight and balance program used by the airlines caused the outages.

The system outages led to planes becoming temporarily grounded — creating delays. Southwest Airlines reported its planes were grounded for 40 minutes “during an outage with a vendor that services multiple carriers with data used in flight planning.”

Following complaints, Southwest released a statement, explaining, “It’s affecting our flights system wide, and we’re working to see if it’s affecting any other carriers this morning as well. In the meantime, once more information has been made available our Agents at the airport will be happy to disseminate it to y’all.”

Delta also released a statement on Twitter, posting, “I completely apologize, we are currently experiencing a System-Wide Outage we are working diligently to get it back up and running. We do not have a specific time as yet.”

According to the FAA, airlines faced problems “with a flight planning weight and balance program called Aerodata.”

“Mainline operations and regional operations are impacted to varying degrees,” they claimed.

Southwest Airlines updated the situation in a later statement to Fox News, declaring, “As of 6:05am CDT, Southwest Airlines has lifted an internal ground stop implemented for about 40 minutes this morning during an outage with a vendor that services multiple carriers with data used in flight planning… Scattered flight delays are anticipated and Customers should check Southwest.com for the latest updates on specific flights. We’re working with Customers on any impacts to their travel plans and we appreciate their understanding as we place nothing higher than the safe operation of every flight.”

American Airlines also issued an update claiming that the problems had been “resolved.”

“Earlier this morning, AeroData had a technical issue that impacted a few of our regional carriers,” declared a spokesman for the company. “This technical issue has been resolved. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”