Southwest Airlines still dealing with delays after outage

In one olive branch to customers, Bob Jordan – Southwest’s chief commercial officer – said that the carrier will extend by a week a fare sale that was to end Thursday.

Southwest “began experiencing intermittent performance issues” Wednesday afternoon, which prompted a temporary halt to all flights that had not yet left the gate, according to the airline.

The carrier canceled 700 flights on Wednesday and another 450 flights on Thursday as it dealt with the outage, and hundreds of flights were delayed. The carrier is allowing customers to move their flights through Sunday at no additional charge. What we’re doing today … is we’re making sure that if we’re doing any schedule adjustment, such as cancellations, that we’re doing it well in advance.

According to Southwest CEO Gary Kelly, the massive computer systems failure was by far the worst in Southwest Airlines’ history. It expects to replace the longstanding reservations system next year – at a cumulative cost of $500 million – and replace other key systems over the next three to five years.

It took about 12 hours to restore the system, which was up and running around 2 a.m. Thursday.

Southwest Airlines apologized to passengers for the problems, saying the airline will “continue to work individually with our affected customers to make this right”.

Southwest advised customers ticketed to fly Thursday to arrive to the airport early, saying “long lines may occur”.

Numerous departures and arrivals have been canceled at Oakland International Airport and Mineta San Jose International Airport with just a couple of cancellations at San Francisco International Airport as of 11:30 a.m. today. It blamed that breakdown on a faulty software application.