Southwest Airlines experiences nationwide flight disruptions due to technical issues.

Southwest Airlines briefly paused its departures on Tuesday due to technical problems, causing delays for more than 1,500 flights, or 36% of its schedule. The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ground stop, but many flights were still delayed. The airline had a similar meltdown over the year-end holidays, resulting in thousands of flight cancellations and an $800 million pretax hit for the fourth quarter. The issues on Tuesday did not appear to be related to that software.