Airline Glitch Results In Massive Lines And Delays For Midway Flyers

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jul 21, 2016 6:55PM

Travelers from Midway Airport who were flying Southwest Airlines on Wednesday or Thursday morning must have felt a terrible sense of déjà vu as they faced massive lines and hours-long waits. But this time the culprit wasn’t an undermanned TSA, as we saw early in the summer, but widespread computer problems caused by a Southwest outage.

Dozens of flights at Midway were affected. Nationwide, nearly 700 flights were canceled on Wednesday; and more than 300 flights were canceled on Thursday, as of 10:15 a.m., according to a Southwest spokesperson.

In a video posted on Thursday night, Southwest Chief Communication Officer Linda Rutherford said the the airline was "thinning our schedule to reduce flights for remainder of the evening."

On Wednesday morning, Southwest reported that most computer systems were again operational. They also released an official apology, adding that the airline had canceled more than 221 flights as of 6:30 a.m. on Thursday.

"I want to start off by once again apologizing to our customers and reiterating that your experience throughout the past 24 hours is not the service you should expect from Southwest Airlines," Rutherford said in a statement. "Most of our systems are back online this morning following yesterday's technology outages, but recovery will take some time. We expect some cancelations and delays as we position aircraft and crews."

The massive waits and long lines had reportedly dissipated by mid-morning on Thursday. Southwest Media Communications would not comment about city-specific cancelations.

Perhaps the worst aspect of it all? Those jerks over at Air Carnival got face-painting and balloons!