Southwest extends fare sale because of glitch, warns of long lines
UPDATE: The next update to this story can be found here: Southwest Airlines flight woes cascade into Friday
ORIGINAL POST: Southwest Airlines canceled about 450 flights Thursday as disruptions lingered from a Wednesday computer outage that knocked the carrier's website offline and delayed flights around the country.
Southwest said it has fixed the problem, which forced it to cancel 700 flights on Wednesday and delay hundreds of others. The airline operates about 3,900 daily flights this time of the year.
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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. Combined, the carrier has canceled more than 1,100 flights and delayed hundreds of others since the technical glitch began Wednesday.
In addition to Thursday's cancellations, flight-tracking service FlightAware showed that another 375 Southwest flights had been delayed as of noon ET.
“The first priority is to get the operation back up and running and serve the customers right now that need to get where they want to go,” Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said Thursday during the company's earnings call. “That is our first priority.”
Southwest hoped it would be back to its normal operating schedule by Friday.
Robert Jordan, Southwest's chief commercial officer, said every customer affected on Wednesday or Thursday would be contacted. A fare sale scheduled to end Thursday was extended one week because of the outage, he added.
“Priority one is to take care of our customers, so everyone affected will be hearing from us," Jordan said on the same call.
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"We are focused on getting customers and their baggage safely to their destinations and apologize to our customers whose travel plans are impacted," Mike Van de Ven, Southwest's chief operating officer, said in a statement issued at 11:30 a.m. ET.
Van de Ven said "most systems (were) back online as of the start of our operational day Thursday," but added that the carrier had canceled more than 300 additional flights as of 11:15 a.m. ET "to manage lingering flight disruptions across our system."
Southwest advised customers ticketed to fly Thursday to arrive to the airport early, saying “long lines may occur.” The carrier is allowing customers to move their flights through Sunday at no additional charge.
In the meantime, disruptions appeared to be hit-and-miss for Southwest's Thursday customers.
The Arizona Republic writes that "it was flying as usual for many customers at (Phoenix) Sky Harbor, but others were dealing with the effects of the outage."
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"I was supposed to fly out at 7:45 this morning, but my flight was cancelled," Josh Baker told the newspaper. "I'm not rescheduling my flight, I'm just canceling the trip."
In California, the San Francisco Chronicle reports long lines and delays were reported by Southwest fliers at all three of the big airports in the San Francisco Bay area.
To the east, Baltimore/Washington International spokesman Jonathan Dean told The Baltimore Sun at around 9 a.m. ET "there were [lines] earlier this morning," but added that "things are moving."
Social media posts showed long lines and crowds at several airports, including Chicago Midway, Atlanta, Boston and Oklahoma City.
Linda Rutherford, the airline's VP of communications, echoed Southwest's apology Thursday via the company's blog.
"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," she wrote. "Most of our systems are back online this morning following yesterday's technology outages, but recovery will take some time. We expect some cancellations and delays as we position aircraft and crews."
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Contributing: Bart Jansen
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