Technology outage briefly delays some Southwest Airlines flights

Southwest Airlines reported a computer outage on Wednesday afternoon that temporarily affected the carrier’s website and the 98 airports it serves, including McCarran International, a company spokesman said.

McCarran airport officials dispatched staffers to assist with growing lines and distribute water to waiting passengers gathered inside Terminal 1 shortly after noon, when Southwest Airlines reported the outage, airport spokeswoman Linda Healey said.

Departing flights were grounded until 1:40 p.m., when airport officials were notified that systems were back online, Healey said.

“We did experience some longer than usual lines for a little more than an hour, but the passengers were processed very quickly once the systems came back up and it’s business as usual now,” Healey said.

About 3:15 p.m., Southwest tweeted that operations had returned to normal.

During the slowdown, lines at the airline’s check-in counter continued to move and remained short.

Southwest is the largest carrier at McCarran International Airport.

Contact Art Marroquin at amarroquin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Find @AMarroquin_LV on Twitter.