Southwest says outage fixed, but some flights canceled Thursday

Southwest says it has fixed computer problems that caused hundreds of flights to be canceled, but it is telling passengers to get to the airport early because there could be long lines.

The airline has already canceled more than 300 flights for Thursday.

Several of the airline's technology systems were affected by an outage that started Wednesday afternoon, causing the cancelation of nearly 700 flights, and delays for hundreds more.

Southwest said in a statement Thursday that most systems are back online.

Southwest® reports most systems are back online as of the start of our operational day Thursday, following performance issues across multiple technology systems as a result of an outage Wednesday afternoon. As of 10:15 a.m. Central Daylight Time, we have canceled more than 300 flights on Thursday to manage lingering flight disruptions across our system. We are focused on getting Customers and their baggage safely to their destinations and apologize to our Customers whose travel plans are impacted. Customers who are booked to travel should check flight status information on Southwest.com and plan to arrive at our airports early, as longer than average lines are likely. Flexible rebooking accommodation is available to Customers who are holding tickets from Wednesday through Sunday.

As a result of the initial technical issues, we canceled nearly 700 flights Wednesday and worked to operate hundreds more that were delayed. Our Employees worked around issues with primary systems and utilized back-up procedures to get as many Customers and checked luggage to their destinations as other teams worked to fix the technical issues.

It's never too early to say thank you and to extend our apologies and we want to share those sentiments both with our hard-working Employees and our loyal and understanding Customers, whom we hope to welcome back for a better experience soon. We'll continue to work individually with our affected Customers to make this right.‎

Passengers flying through Denver International Airport can check their flight status here.