Southwest Airlines apologizes for delays as it rebounds from outage

Southwest Airlines officials said late Wednesday night they were reducing the number of flights as they continued to deal with a major computer outage that grounded flights in Chicago and across the country.

In a video posted to Southwest's Facebook account, Chief Communications Officer Linda Rutherford apologized for the delays and said the system could still be affected Thursday morning.

"This has been a really challenging day," Rutherford said. "We know we've disappointed customers today and we're really, really sorry about that."

A power outage spawned breakdowns across "multiple technology systems," the airline said on Wednesday. Myriad flights at Midway International Airport, a Southwest hub, were grounded or delayed as a result.

Rutherford said the airline's social media and call lines have been flooded with complaints, but officials would keep responding and working 24 hours a day to get up and running again.

"We are working really, really hard to try to accommodate customers and get them where they want to go," she said.

The airline also said it would"offer flexible accommodations for rebooking your travel" and asked people to be patient as the system rebounds from the glitch.

Updates were being posted on swamedia.com, as well as Southwest's Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Daily Herald staff writer Melissa Silverberg contributed to this report.