A computer glitch is to blame for the cancellation of 57 Southwest Airlines flights scheduled for late Friday and early Saturday morning, the airline confirmed. The glitch was fixed, but flights were still cancelled in the hours after the errors was fixed.
Michelle Agnew, an airline spokeswoman confirmed to The Associated Press that the first cluster of 43 flights were cancelled late Friday in the western U.S.. Another 14 that were set to take off early Saturday morning were cancelled. Those flights were scattered around the country.
The glitch impaired service on the West Coast, grounding around 250 flights late Friday temporarily. Southwest was not able to check-in passengers, print passes and check the weight of aircraft during the glitch.
According to NBC News, Southwest tweeted around 2 a.m. Saturday that the glitch was fixed and that no more flights would be affected. The airline added that it was not sure what the cause was.
“We sincerely appreciate everyone's patience as we work diligently now to get people where they are supposed to be. Because it is late and this is a slow ramp-up back to normalcy, there still could be some cancellations - but we're working hard to get everyone in the air,” a statement read.