Technical issues cause Southwest Airlines outage, many passengers left grounded

Southwest Airlines is attempting to resolve technical issues with its computer systems that caused a system-wide outage and affected many flights across the country.

In a tweet Wednesday afternoon, Southwest Airlines wrote:

Southwest Airlines said in a statement to FOX 5:

"Southwest Airlines began experiencing intermittent performance issues earlier this afternoon with multiple technology systems as a result of an outage. We are now managing flight delays across our system, with a temporary ground stop in place for those flights that have not left the gate. We apologize to our Customers whose travel plans are impacted. We have a Team of experts working diligently to resolve the technical issues and their efforts have systems gradually coming back online. We expect to continue our move toward a normal operation but believe it will take time. Updates will be posted on swamedia.com, our Southwest Facebook page and Twitter accounts."

Southwest Airlines' website is also encountering issues, with visitors unable to book flights and only able to click on links to check their flight status or to check in.

Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and Reagan National Airport are recommending Southwest passengers to allow for extra time to check in for their flights due to the technical glitch.

At BWI Airport, there were long lines at the Southwest Airlines terminal with many passengers basically camping out for hours there. According to BWI's website, most of Southwest's flights there were either delayed or canceled.