Tech glitch still hinders Southwest.

Wednesday’s delays vex airline passengers a day later; reps say systems back online

Dozens of Southwest Airlines passengers had to sleep at airports in Oakland and San Jose on Wednesday night after a technical glitch prompted nationwide flight cancellations and delays that were still impacting customers Thursday.

Oakland police chaplain the Rev. Jayson Landeza was trying to travel from Albuquerque to the Bay Area on Wednesday when Southwest began canceling flights, including his. He paid $400 to get on a Southwest flight that was supposed to leave later that night, only to find out a few hours later it had also been canceled, he said.

The airline rebooked him on an even later flight that would

have gotten him back into Oakland in time to preside over a funeral Thursday morning, but that flight was also canceled, forcing him to spend the night in Albuquerque. On Thursday afternoon, roughly 15 minutes before he was due to board his fourth scheduled flight, he found out it had been delayed at least another hour and that he might not be getting back into Oakland on Thursday after all.

Despite the repeated delays, Landeza was in surprisingly high spirits.

“I’m blessed in other ways, and I have no schedule to worry about,” Landeza said, adding that someone took over the funeral services for him on Thursday. “Any chance I can get to eat New Mexican food one more day, and I’m OK with that. I have no complaints.”

The same couldn’t be said for his fellow passengers, Landeza said. Many were screaming and yelling at ticketing agents at the airport, he said. The airline brought in pizza and water for folks waiting in line to rebook, but Landeza said tempers were high.

“I felt bad for the ticket and gate agents, because they’re trying to rebook all these flights and people were taking their frustrations out on them,” Landeza said.

Mike Van de Ven, Southwest’s chief operating officer, on Thursday offered an apology to customers stuck at airports across the country and to employees working to clear a backlog of delayed flights.

“I realize how frustrating it can be to have your travel plans disrupted, and I realize that some of those travel plans are for some really special moments, and they can’t be replaced,” he said. “We want to thank our employees for their heroic efforts and also our customers for their incredible patience.”

As of Thursday morning, Van de Ven said Southwest’s computer systems were back up and running as intended.

A technical failure Wednesday resulted in an outage, Southwest officials said. Van de Ven said the airline has redundant sys- tems that were supposed to kick in, but didn’t.

“We’re doing a deep dive on that to try to understand why that happened and prevent that from happening again,” he said.

The air carrier has replaced a router, rebooted some 400 servers and reinstalled applications on those servers to get them back up and running, which Van de Ven said took about 12 hours to complete. He said Southwest is working to clear a backlog of canceled and delayed flights.

At Oakland International Airport Thursday, spokeswoman Keonnis Taylor said passengers were experiencing an average wait time of 45 minutes for both inbound and outbound Southwest flights. She said some customers had to sleep in the airport overnight.

Several of the airport concession stands kept their businesses open past normal operating hours so people could get something to eat and drink, Taylor said. Lines were also long at the airport Thursday, and Taylor said there was about a 15-minute wait for the security checkpoint and ticketing lines for Southwest.

Roughly 80 Southwest passengers spent the night at Mineta San Jose International Airport. Spokeswoman Rosemary Barnes said airport officials were able to make some accommodations for the travelers.

Nearly 700 flights out of more than 3,900 were canceled Wednesday and hundreds more were delayed as a result of the outage. As of 2 p.m. Thursday, airline officials said 450 flights had been canceled, primarily as a result of displaced crews and aircraft.

Shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday, Southwest had canceled 21 flights out of Oakland, nine flights out of San Jose, and two flights out of San Francisco International Airport.

“We’re continuing our focus on getting customers and their baggage to their destinations safely,” airline officials said in a statement.

The airline is offering flexible rebooking services for passengers impacted by the delays.