There are hundreds of flights under Southwest Airlines that were delayed because of "technology issues" on Sunday. The delays caused a pile-up of passengers from Los Angeles to Wahington, D.C.
Southwest has urged its passengers for Sunday evening towards Monday to manually visit their airline's website, Southwest.com, to check-in beforehand and to print their passes before going to the airport, and urged them to comply and check-in two hours before the time of the flight.
There were said to be "technical challenges" on their applications that delayed 450 of the 3600 Sunday flights, Southwest Airline Media announced on their website.
We apologize for this morning's technical issues. We are working to restore service to our Customers, and we appreciate your patience.
— Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) October 11, 2015
The cause of the technical glitch has not ben identified yet and Southwest Airlines staff were required to manually distribute plane tickets, NBC News reported.
There is no particular reason for the problem and if their system was hacked, there is "absolutely no indication now," according to Bradd Hawkins, the spokesman for Southwest Airlines.
One of the passengers from Chicago, E.J. Schultz, said that staff told people in line that those who had printed copies of their boarding passes were allowed to board immediately, but those who only had digital copies on their phones or tablets had to wait in line.
It was not clear why Southwest did not tell passengers to print their boarding passes beforehand. "If everyone had done that, it would've saved so much time," Schultz said, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Representatives for Southwest Airlines don't know when the tech issues will last, according to the Washington Post.
