Thousands Stranded at LAX as Southwest Clears Backlog from Computer Outage

LOS ANGELES, CA — Thousands of passengers at Los Angeles International and other Southland airports were stranded or waiting out extensive delays Thursday as Southwest Airlines continued to recover from a massive computer glitch that temporarily halted all of its flights.

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., more than 300 flights had been canceled Thursday, according to the airline. By mid-afternoon, that number rose to about 450.

The airline had about 3,900 departures scheduled Thursday across the country.

According to the LAX online flight-tracker, six departing Southwest flights had been scrubbed for Thursday as of mid-morning, and about 10 showed delays. A dozen incoming flights were canceled, and seven others were delayed, although four flights actually arrived early. By mid-afternoon, the situation worsened, with the vast majority of departing and arriving Southwest flights at LAX listed as either delayed or canceled.

The story was the same at other area airports. The majority of flights at John Wayne Airport in Orange County and Bob Hope Airport in Burbank were either running late — by hours in some cases — or scrubbed altogether.

Southwest Airlines again 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 Thursay, but flight problems were expected to continue 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."

— City News Service, photo courtesy of Southwest