Southwest Says Connectivity Restored At BWI After Outage Causes Major Delays

BALTIMORE (WJZ) --  Southwest passengers at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport were angry about delays following a connectivity issue cause major delays.

Some Southwest customers were still stuck going into Tuesday night after the airline experienced technical problems that impacted dozens of flights and affected hundreds.

"I just got an email that my flight was canceled, so I wasn't too thrilled about that," A Southwest customer said.

The airline initially told passengers it was due to a power outage at BWI, but later said it was due to one of their vendors.

As of 3:40 p.m, Southwest tweeted: "We've just received word that connectivity in BWI has been restored. Thanks for your continued patience while we work to get you on your way."

But WJZ's Devin Bartolotta, who's at BWI, said there are still some residual issues and delays nationwide.

Delayed passengers took to Twitter Tuesday afternoon to express their frustrations:

One woman said once she arrived at BWI for a connecting flight, the customer service was subpar.

"I totally get they probably have had combative customers all day long, I totally get it, but they didn't even know. We were like where are our bags, and they were giving us answers that didn't make sense," said Shea Najuch, a passenger flying in from New York.

Southwest said the outage lasted for four hours, but the impact is being felt far beyond that.

After 37 flights were canceled, the airline said it's "Offering flexible accommodation policies for Southwest customers traveling to/from/through BWI" on Tuesday.

But some passengers begged to differ. One woman said she will have to wait a full 24-hours to get another flight back home to Florida.

"I have things to do tomorrow. I was supposed to go to work. I had to call my boss and I had to explain the whole thing. Now I have to get outside and find a hotel," said Nafisa Shikdar, a passenger flying back to Florida.

In addition to apologizing to customers, Southwest also praised its workers, who in some cases, had to resort to manual measures- pen and paper boarding passes- when the system was down.

BWI tweeted to passengers that the outage isn't on their part.

"No, there is not a power outage here. Southwest has just reported an issue to us regarding their computer system. We advise checking with the airline for flight-specific updates," the airport tweeted to a user.

The airport tweeted at another user: "Southwest advised a few minutes ago of an issue with their computer network. At last check, Southwest passengers were being manually checked in. That is the extent of the information provided to us."

"There is an outage which is affecting computers, check-in, phones, and internet. We are performing manual processes until the issue is resolved," the airline tweeted at a user.

WJZ called Southwest to get an explanation. They emailed this statement to us:

Our Team at BWI is working hard to minimize inconvenience for Southwest Customers traveling out and in of Baltimore/Washington international Thurgood Marshall Airport as we work around a connectivity issue (with a vendor that provides data streams to our phones, computers) that's caused us to slow-roll departures on flights to get people and bags on those aircraft as we use backup processes.

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In:
• Baltimore
• Baltimore City
• Power Outage