75% of Southwest Airlines Flights Delayed at RDU Saturday amid Nationwide Disruptions
Apr. 2—More than 75% of Southwest Airlines flights arriving or departing at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport were delayed Saturday, as internal system errors caused delays and cancellations nationwide.
As of 10:30 a.m., 13 out of 16 departing Southwest flights and 12 out of 16 arriving Southwest flights had been delayed, according to RDU's flight status board. Flight tracking website FlightAware reported 15 total Southwest flight delays at the airport on Saturday.
Nationwide, 955 Southwest flights were delayed and 184 had been cancelled as of Saturday morning, according to FlightAware.
Southwest Airlines declined to comment when asked how many local flights had been affected, or whether delays might persist through Sunday.
In a statement, the airline said some of its "earliest departing flights were delayed this morning, and a handful of them canceled, after we experienced intermittent performance issues following routine overnight maintenance of some of our backend technology."
"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," the company said.
Southwest Airlines did not clarify what "intermittent performance issues" meant or why they prevented flights from departing.
Delays were affecting flights as late as Saturday night, according to RDU's flight board.
A flight from RDU to Denver was delayed from its 5:30 p.m. departure time to 6:06 p.m., while a flight from Baltimore saw its arrival time changed from 8:25 p.m. to 9:08 p.m.
Flights Saturday morning saw delays of several hours.
"We had some delays this morning as part of that nationwide Southwest outage," said Stephanie Hawco, a spokesperson for RDU.
She advised travelers to keep an eye on their departure time in case of further delays.
None of the affected RDU flights had direct service to New Orleans, where UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University will face off Saturday night in a historic Final Four match in the NCAA Tournament. But some Southwest flights in and out of the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport were affected by delays, according to FlightAware.
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