Southwest Airlines survives Microsoft outage but gets made fun of online by people accusing it of using outdated systems

DALLAS — If you were traveling on Friday, chances are you had a rough experience — that is unless you were flying with Dallas-based Southwest Airlines. On Friday, a software update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike created a meltdown for all of its customers running Microsoft Windows. This faulty update resulted in thousands of flights being delayed and canceled across the United States and beyond. Except for those flying with Southwest Airlines. “No issues to report from us,” the airline told WFAA. Now, while other airlines such as American, Delta, Spirit and United experienced issues, how was Southwest able to avoid all of this chaos? Well, many are accusing Southwest Airlines of using outdated software, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, which are decades old at this point. While the user that posted the above statement has come out and said that he was “trolling,” other X users have taken this opportunity to create memes and poke fun at the airline and its alleged attitude of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” One of these memes included a fake X post from Southwest Airlines claiming that its entire systems run on a 1980s-style computer. So, while the amount of truth to these claims isn’t certain, it’s likely the Dallas-based airline has upgraded its software since 1995 and its ability to stay afloat during the outage is linked to something else. But people can still have fun!