Flight delays across US after Southwest Airlines tech glitch

WASHINGTON: Southwest Airlines blamed a weather data outage after delaying more than 1,400 flights across the United States Monday.

Normal service had resumed by Tuesday's early hours.

"Our third-party weather data provider experienced intermittent performance issues earlier this evening preventing transmission of weather information that is required to safely operate our aircraft," the Dallas-based company said in a statement.

"We implemented a ground stop to protect the safety of our crews and customers."

It was unclear how long the problems lasted, but passengers across the country reported delays of several hours.

According to Flightaware.com, which tracks airline delays, there were 1,412 for Southwest Monday, as well as 41 cancellations.

Hollywood Burbank airport, in California, said late Monday: "Southwest Airlines has suspended all departures from Hollywood Burbank Airport due to network issues."

The problems led to a flurry of online disgruntlement aimed at the company.

Jonica Booth, an actor with more than 110,000 Twitter followers, tweeted that Southwest "should do something nice for everyone who had a flight today!!!"

"Ppl are in this airport cryin and everything," she said. "These ppl wanna go home."

Another user posted of Southwest: "Gonna be stuck away from home again because of them. This time just a stupid computer that won't load."

"We appreciate our customers' patience as we work to get them to their destinations as quickly as possible," the company's statement added.