LAX Power Outage Causes Cancellations and Delays for Southwest and United

Wednesday night, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) experienced a power outage that caused a ripple effect of delays and cancellations.

The terminals serving Southwest and United appeared to be affected the most. Hundreds of passengers were briefly stuck on grounded aircraft, according to The Associated Press.

The outage was caused by a glitch at a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power station, the Los Angeles Times reports. Airport personnel also told the Times that it takes about 1.5 hours for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and other airport staff to reboot everything. And, in addition to the reboot, all passengers in the airport had to also go through security again. Delays and cancellations ensued.

While LAX is now up and running again, the impact of the outage is still affecting a handful of Thursday's flights. Specifically for Southwest — LAX tweeted on Thursday morning that the airliner had reported 11 cancelations and 15 delays associated with when Terminal 1 was emptied of passengers so that they could be re-screened by the TSA. The airport suggested via Twitter that Southwest customers contact the airliner for updates on their flight.

In a statement to TPG, a Southwest representative implied that the situation should be resolved sometime soon. "The ground stop has been lifted and passengers are beginning to trickle back into the terminal. From here, we’ll meter flights to and from LAX to help resume the operation," said the spokeswoman.

The snafu also affected United, which delayed 19 flights, cancelled two and diverted nine on Wednesday, according to AP. United's schedule appeared to be mostly normal by Thursday morning.