US Airways Says Operations Nearing Normal After Computer Glitches

PHOENIX (AP) _ US Airways said Tuesday its operations were returning to normal after computer glitches started shutting down hundreds of check-in kiosks over the weekend. <br/><br/>US Airways spokesman

Tuesday, March 6th 2007, 1:18 pm

By: News On 6

PHOENIX (AP) _ US Airways said Tuesday its operations were returning to normal after computer glitches started shutting down hundreds of check-in kiosks over the weekend.

US Airways spokesman Phil Gee said technicians are continuing to fix computer systems in several cities where travelers experienced delays. Meanwhile, the carrier asked its customers to use Web-based check-ins.

Problems with self-service kiosks in Charlotte, Philadelphia, Boston and Las Vegas began Sunday after the airline put a new computerized reservation system in place.

In all, 685 of the airline's 930 kiosks shut down at various times during the past few days, Gee said. The malfunctioning kiosks resulted in an unspecified number of delays, but led to no flight cancellations.

Some intermittent kiosk problems have surfaced in other cities, such as Seattle and Richmond, Va., but none that resulted in waits beyond a few minutes.

By Tuesday, Gee said more than 70 percent of the airlines departures and arrivals were on time _ about normal for US Airways. The nation's 5th largest airline has about 3,800 daily departures.

The computer system is a consolidation of the reservation systems of US Airways and America West Airlines, which combined in 2005.

Gee said many of the kiosks had trouble processing the new data and shut down. Customers also couldn't check in online over part of Saturday and Sunday because of the system consolidation, putting more pressure on ticket counters across the country.

The Web check-in was online by midday Sunday, the carrier said, allowing passengers to bypass the ticket counters and head straight to security.