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Southwest sees new delays amid refunds to customers over the Christmas weekend chaos

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Southwest Airlines canceled thousands of flights last week, which made customers angry. On Tuesday, the airline said it was making “solid progress” on refunds, even though another problem was causing more travel problems.

Several people tweeted on Tuesday that crews told them planes couldn’t take off because the weather system was down or they didn’t have the information they needed about the weather.

There were reports of delays on Tuesday, just a few days after the airline said it was back to normal after the chaos of the holidays.

In a statement released late Tuesday, Southwest said that a third-party vendor, IBM, “had a brief outage in their service that provides weather data before Southwest sends out flights.”

In a statement, the airline said that there would be “only minor delays” for the rest of the evening.

The statement said, “We’re sorry for any trouble and appreciate everyone’s patience as we work to get Customers to their destinations as quickly and safely as possible.”

The Federal Aviation Administration didn’t say anything about it because they said it was up to the airline. When asked for comment early Wednesday, IBM didn’t answer right away.

Tuesday, FlightAware, a website that tracks flights, showed that 138 Southwest flights were canceled, or 3%, and that about 1,560 flights were late. The Southwest website says that 24 flights were canceled and 115 were late on Wednesday.

After canceling two-thirds of its daily flights for most of the week before New Year’s Day, the Dallas-based airline said on Friday that everything was back to normal.

All carriers were affected by a big winter storm that hit most of the U.S. right before the Christmas holiday, but some carriers were able to get back to normal.

Southwest canceled thousands of flights, leaving people and their bags stranded. This caused what some travelers called a “meltdown” and made them angry.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said it was “unacceptable” and promised to hold Southwest accountable. Pete Buttigieg, who is in charge of transportation, said that Southwest’s systems failed.

Southwest’s CEO has said that investments in technology are already happening.

In a statement released earlier on Tuesday, the airline said it was trying to win back the trust of its customers. Southwest said it had made “solid progress” in fixing problems caused to passengers, such as processing refund requests and reuniting travelers with their lost luggage.

On Tuesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary for the White House, said, “Southwest Airlines failed its customers, period.”

She said that customers should get their money back and their luggage back.

“The Department of Transportation is keeping an eye on. “They’re keeping a close eye on this to make sure it all happens, and if Southwest doesn’t pay, they’ll fine them,” Jean-Pierre said.

Tuesday, FlightAware, a website that tracks flights, showed that 138 Southwest flights were canceled, or 3%, and that about 1,560 flights were late. The Southwest website says that 24 flights were canceled and 115 were late on Wednesday.

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