Southwest technology problems cancel, delay flights

DALLAS (AP) — Hundreds of Southwest Airlines flights across the country were delayed or canceled Wednesday after technology problems prevented many travelers from checking in or boarding flights.

Southwest said that computer systems were gradually coming back, but it warned customers booked on Thursday flights to check their flight's status online and arrive at the airport early because long lines were expected.

[...] the pilots reached the end of their shifts, so passengers waited for a replacement crew.

Airlines have sprawling, overlapping and complicated technology systems, and even brief outages can cause thousands of passengers to be stranded for hours.

Last October, an outage caused about 800 Southwest flights to be delayed and forced employees to issue tickets and boarding passes by hand.