Thousands of passengers across US were stranded as Southwest Airlines faced major system outage

The new Southwest Airlines experienced significant travel disruptions across the United States on Tuesday due to a computer system outage, marking the second major incident of this kind within four months.

The glitch, which was attributed to a firewall failure, forced the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ground all Southwest flights temporarily, affecting thousands of travelers.

According to Southwest, the issue stemmed from a vendor-supplied firewall that went down, causing a loss of connection to operational data.

This disruption led to the grounding of over 1,500 flights and delays for tens of thousands of passengers.

The travel chaos began in the afternoon, with numerous passengers reporting being stranded on planes or at airports without clear information on when flights would resume.

Frustrated travelers took to social media to express their grievances, with some sharing that they were told the delays could last up to six hours.