Southwest Airlines Grounds All Flights Nationwide Due to Technical Issues Before Resuming Limited Service

Southwestern Airlines briefly halted all departures due to technical problems that disrupted over a third of its flights.
The airline cited issues with a firewall supplied by an outside vendor that caused the loss of some operational data.
Flights were grounded for under 20 minutes but delays continued to ripple across the system.
The disruption comes months after the airline canceled thousands of flights over the winter holidays due to problems with outdated software.
Southwest has pledged over $1 billion to upgrade technology and improve resilience to prevent future meltdowns.