Hundreds of Southwest Airlines Flights , Are Delayed After Nationwide Ground Stop Is Lifted.<br />CNN reports that according to Southwest Airlines, "data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure" led to a temporary ground stop on April 18.<br />Early this morning, a vendor-supplied firewall went down and connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost, Dan Landson, Southwest Airlines spokesman, via CNN.<br />The FAA later lifted the ground stop, <br />and Southwest tweeted at 11:35 a.m. <br />that it had resumed operations.<br />According to FlightAware, <br />1,728 flights were delayed as a result.<br />Nine flights were canceled as the airline's employees "worked quickly to minimize disruptions.".<br />CNN reports that the issues come just <br />months after Southwest had to cancel <br />over 16,700 flights from Dec. 20 to Dec. 29.<br />CNN reports that the airline said alterations "to its staff scheduling computer systems" were to blame.<br />Last month, the company revealed an <br />"action plan" to prevent that from happening again
