Travelers nationwide were met with delays and cancellations Saturday morning as Southwest Airlines reported a system outage related to scheduled maintenance.
As of around 6:30 a.m., nearly 200 Southwest flights were canceled and nearly 400 were delayed nationwide, according to FlightAware.com. The airline replied to frustrated customers on Twitter that its website was having an outage, which was fixed by 8 a.m. EDT.
In a statement, Southwest said the problems were caused by technical issues after routine maintenance. While the issue affected airports nationwide, the airline added that customers in the eastern and central time zones had the most trouble.
“Some of our earliest departing flights were delayed this morning, and a handful of them canceled, after we experienced intermittent technology issues following routine overnight maintenance," Southwest said. "We offer heartfelt apologies to our Customers for any inconvenience, and gratitude to our employees who are working diligently to make it up to them."
Southwest said it will keep providing updates to customers whose Saturday flights were still delayed because of the resolved issue.
“Things just get changed and you have to roll with the punches, but we did drive for two and a half hours to have a direct flight and they had already changed our flight on the way back," a Columbus traveler told WBNS. "Now, we have to stop with six kids and that’s just frustrating."