A weather information system, not the weather itself, caused flight delays in San Diego. NBC 7’s Dave Summers has the details.
A day after more than 1,400 Southwest Airlines flights across the country, including at least 10 to and from San Diego International Airport, were delayed, the company announced it was experiencing more issues.
The airline said at about 11 a.m. that it was "aware of system issues" it was undergoing. Although Southwest did not offer details on what Tuesday's issues were and how many flights were affected, it did say that it was working to resolve the problems quickly.
Monday night, problems with the airline's third-party weather information provider caused the massive flight delays nationwide, it said. Airline spokesperson Dan Landson said the provider was briefly unable to share weather data required for flight.
"While Southwest Teams and the vendor worked to restore connectivity, we implemented a ground stop to protect the Safety of our Crews and Customers," Landson said in a statement.
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The airline tallied more than 1,400 delays — nearly 40% of those scheduled, and the most of any airline on the planet, according to Flightaware, a site that tracks global airline cancellations and other issues.
In replies to a barrage of complaints on its official Twitter page, airline representatives apologized to customers and said the company was working to resolve the problem “ASAP.”
The following flights to and from the San Diego Aiport were stopped, according to airport spokesperson Jonathan Heller:
- Arriving
- 1327 from Denver
- 1719 from Sacramento
- 1372 from Dallas-Love
- 705 from Chicago
- 5713 from Phoenix
- 1384 from Baltimore
Departing - 2343 to San Francisco
- 1327 to Las Vegas
- 1999 to Denver
- 775 to Chicago
Landson said full flight operations were beginning to resume at around 9:11 p.m. It was unclear when the ground stop was put in place.
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While the ground stop was active, Heller said all flights departing from San Diego's Terminal 1 were affected. By 11:30 p.m., most flights had been delayed by more than an hour, and some were rescheduled for Tuesday.
"I understand life happens. Life happens, so it's not that big of a deal as of," one flyer said.
Others weren't as forgiving.
"Where I'm headed is about a 40-minute drive from the airport and then I have to work at 5 a.m., so I'm not looking forward to it," traveler Krystina Mealon said.
Network issues also forced the Hollywood Burbank airport to pause all departing Southwest flights, according to a tweet sent at 7:38 p.m. At 8:11 p.m., the airport said the issues had been resolved and departing flights were resuming. It is unclear if the stoppages were caused by the same weather systems issues San Diego experienced.
