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According to a Southwest Airlines report, a passenger processing system outage delayed 450 Southwest flights on Sunday.
The airliner disclosed that the technical issues affected its computer systems nationwide, so all its passengers should expect services to be discontinued on all airports and phone centers.
The technical issue forced the company’s employees to issue tickets by hand and process flights for thousands of travelers without help from a computer system. On airports, passengers queued in long lines, while at Los Angeles International Airport staffers supplied passengers waiting in the sun with water and canopies.
Travelers who boarded a Southwest plane on Las Vegas McCarran International Airport said that they had to wait in line two to three hours. The Federal Aviation Administration declined to try and solve the issue, saying that it is the airliner’s responsibility. The agency did acknowledge that it was aware of the delays.
Airports nationwide urged passengers to arrive at the airport early to avoid long wait lines. Southwest Airlines announced that a ‘technical glitch’ was casing the problems in the company’s passenger processing system, and technicians were trying to solve the problem.
The company urged passengers to arrive at the terminals at least a couple of hours earlier. Yet, it failed to prompt them to print out their boarding passes which would have saved them hours of waiting.
The company also cited ‘technology issues’ that caused check-in delays in hundreds of its flights. Nevertheless, according to an airliner’s report, IT experts were working ‘diligently’ to get o the bottom of the issues. Plus, airport staffers helped each traveler with his or her journey.
On Twitter, the company tried to calm customers down. It also briefed them that for the moment they would not be able to perform online check-ins. The airliner declined to provide travelers with an approximate hour when the system is expected to be back up.
The company couldn’t be reached for comment Sunday. It only tweeted that there was not set time frame on when the problem gets solved and thanked customers for being so patient.
Following the announcement that a system outage delayed 450 Southwest flights and froze the company’s website and app, the airliner added that there were also ‘short delays’ in nearly 100 flights. The company had on schedule 3,600 flights for Sunday.
Travelers were theoretically able to contact airports to see whether flights were still available, but busy phone lines kept them on hold for hours. The company said that it would return with updates as soon as they became available.
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