A few delays were reported today for Southwest Airlines flights at Los Angeles International Airport, as the airline continued to recover from a massive computer glitch that temporarily halted all of its flights. Southwest issued a public apology following the incident.
According to the LAX website, four Southwest arrivals and four departures will be delayed today during a time frame extending through early afternoon, with all other flights either on time or early. No cancellations were being reported.
At Long Beach Airport, no arrivals will be delayed, and one departure will be delayed. At John Wayne Airport, 12 arriving flights were canceled, and 12 departing flights were canceled.
The computer failure occurred around midday Wednesday, temporarily keeping all of the airline’s flights grounded as technicians scrambled to get the systems back online. The problem was fixed by early afternoon, but the outage created a logjam of flights, prompting delays and cancellations across the nation.
About 700 Southwest flights were canceled nationally on Wednesday. By about 8 a.m. Thursday, more than 300 flights had been canceled, according to the airline. By mid-afternoon, that number rose to about 450.
Southwest Airlines apologized to passengers for the problems, saying the airline will “continue to work individually with our affected customers to make this right.”
Most of the airline’s systems were back online Thursday, but flight problems continued as officials worked to manage the backlog.
“We are focused on getting customers and their baggage safely to their destinations and apologize to our customers whose travel plans are impacted,” according to the airline. “Customers who are booked to travel should check flight status information on Southwest.com and plan to arrive at our airports early, as longer-than-average lines are likely. Flexible rebooking accommodation is available to customers who are holding tickets from Wednesday through Sunday.”
