Southwest Airlines experienced a nationwide computer outage Wednesday afternoon that temporarily stopped flights, the airline said.
The ground stop was lifted early Tuesday evening, but Orlando International Airport spokeswoman Carolyn Fennel said the outage has caused flight delays that will continue through the day.
A Tampa International Airport spokeswoman also said there could be a domino effect with some delays throughout the night.
We are aware and investigating current issues with our systems. We will keep you posted as we have more information to share.
— Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) July 20, 2016
The computer outage only affected Southwest flights, OIA spokesman Rod Johnson said.
Southwest issued this statement:
Southwest Airlines began experiencing intermittent performance issues earlier this afternoon with multiple technology systems as a result of an outage. We are now managing flight delays across our system, with a temporary ground stop in place for those flights that have not left the gate. We apologize to our Customers whose travel plans are impacted. We have a Team of experts working diligently to resolve the technical issues and their efforts have systems gradually coming back online. We expect to continue our move toward a normal operation but believe it will take time. Updates will be posted on swamedia.com, our Southwest Facebook page and Twitter accounts.