Holiday travel season comes to end with series of head-scratching incidents
The holiday travel season came to an end with a series of head-scratching incidents.
First, U.S. Customs computers went out for several hours Monday at a number of airports, causing long lines for returning travelers.
Customs said there are no signs of any sinister activity at this point, but the timing Monday could not have been worse..
“It’s insane,” said passenger Megan Martin. “Our global entry pass was denied, it had a big X on it, and then they proceeded, and it was like a line of a thousand people, or more. It was absolutely despicable.”
It was a nightmare for international flyers, lines lasting for hours.
Miami’s airport was particularly hard hit as the outage came right as 30 or so flights were arriving. Officers had to manually check each passenger before they could be cleared. Flyers who have global entry and are used to speeding though customs in minutes. Monday night it took hours, and hundreds missed their connecting flights,
Customs said this was all due to a software update installed just last week, that update caused the system to crash. All that has now been fixed and things are slowly getting back to normal at this hour.
There were also a couple of other unnerving airline events over the past couple of days.
Passengers aboard Southwest flight 3556 flying from San Antonio to Orlando found themselves in a scary situation.
The airline said the 133 passengers had to put on the oxygen masks after a pressurization problem that developed in flight. The Boeing 737 diverted to Jacksonville, where it was met by emergency vehicles. There were no injuries.
And a baggage worker was not injured early Sunday morning after they found him locked in the cargo hold of a United Express flight from Charlotte.
Crews on the ground at Washington’s Dulles Airport found him there after the plane landed after an hour long flight.
The worker declined medical attention.
The luggage hold was pressurized. The FAA said it’s now investigating how this happened without anyone noticing he was even missing.
