Southwest Airlines canceled hundreds of flights following a systemwide technology outage that began at 1 p.m. CST Wednesday, July 20.
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Southwest said it ultimately canceled almost 700 flights on Wednesday.
One passenger told 11Alive’s Erin Calandra she and her three children had been waiting in line for over two and a half hours, and had tried to call someone with Southwest since 3 a.m., but could not get through.
The disruption occurred when an unspecified piece of equipment failed and a backup system also malfunctioned, Kelly said in an interview. “We need to understand why and make sure that that doesn’t happen again”. He said router failures aren’t uncommon, but this outage was unusually severe.
Many travelers took to Twitter to express their frustrations. Flight delays across our network have resulted in 600-700 canceled and delayed flights.
Southwest Airlines said it had a computer outage on Wednesday, and the ripple effects were still being felt on Thursday morning across the country and in CT.
The company said it was forced to ground additional Thursday flights as it worked to get its planes and crews back in the right places to operate its normal schedule. Southwest blamed that breakdown on a faulty software application.
Our earlier story, posted Wednesday.
Airport kiosks, the Southwest Airlines website and the customer service computer systems were down for about an hour on Wednesday causing travel problems nationwide.
Airport officials thanked travelers for their patience and urged them to check the status of their flights before heading to Lindbergh Field.
The airline did manual check-ins at Lambert as well. The big board at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks showed that about half of Southwest flights at Bradley were canceled.
By late afternoon, systems were gradually coming back online, Southwest spokesman Dan Landson said.
Tina Thomas, of Florida, remained on standby for a 4:30 p.m. flight to NY after her morning flight was canceled.
Computers were restored Thursday morning, but the problems remained.
Some flights were arriving and departing on time, but others were canceled Thursday morning at Sacramento International Airport. “The recovery is staring off slowly, we have 335 cancellations, which will allow us to improve during the day”.
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Rutherford said the airline takes responsibility for the delays and cancellations.
