On October 9, 2026, Southwest Airlines experienced a brief network outage that caused nearly 900 flight delays and 43 cancellations across its U.S. operations by 9:15 a.m., according to FlightAware data.
The disruption originated from a system issue at Southwest’s vendor Amadeus, which provides the airline’s reservation system and related services. The outage impacted boarding pass printing and mobile app scanning functions.
Dallas Love Field Airport experienced 56 delays and seven cancellations of Southwest flights by 9:15 a.m. Lauren Rounds, spokesperson for the City of Dallas’ Department of Aviation, confirmed the airport was notified about the intermittent internal network outage
affecting Southwest’s processes.
A Southwest spokesperson said, “Southwest experienced a brief interruption due to a system outage at our vendor, Amadeus. The airline continued to check baggage and board flights manually while full functionality was restored. We apologize to our Customers for any inconvenience and are working to get them to their destinations as quickly as possible. Nothing is more important to Southwest than the Safety of our Customers and Employees.”
Despite the outage, Southwest manually checked baggage and boarded flights. Passengers experienced delays and some cancellations nationwide as the airline worked to restore full system functionality.
