Frustration and baggage mount at Midway in post-Christmas Southwest Airlines chaos

Frustrated families spent hours in check-in lines and searching through a sea of baggage Monday at Chicago's Midway International Airport in a post-Christmas travel mess that saw thousands of Southwest Airlines flights canceled and delayed.

The airline suffered a "wide-scale disruption" in service that left thousands of customers stranded across the country and their suitcases in different cities as a winter storm upended holiday travel.

Some passengers said they were stuck for three or four hours in lines that spanned the entire length of Midway's upper-level departures concourse.

Midway reported 300 flight cancellations and 151 delays as of 3:45 p.m. O'Hare International Airport had 126 flights canceled and 769 delayed.

Southwest Airlines accounted for almost all the Midway disruptions, with 68% of its flights into or out of the airport canceled and another 17% delayed, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Southwest had more O'Hare flights canceled than any other airline, too - about 86% of its trips were called off there - and made up 45% of all canceled flights within, into or out of the United States on Monday.

Passengers who had already battled through cancellations and delays were digging through the luggage upon arrival.

• This report was produced in partnership with the Chicago Sun-Times. To see the full report, check chicago.suntimes.com.